US forces massed around Afghanistan on Saturday as President George W. Bush pressed on with plans for a military strike on terrorist bases and a defiant Taliban militia warned of holy war.
Bush was to hold a video-conference on attack plans with his National Security Council from his Camp David country retreat as powerful bombers were deployed to bases within striking distance of Afghanistan, officials said.
In Uzbekistan military officials told AFP that US transport planes had landed at a military airfield at Tuzel, about 15 kilometers from Tashkent, raising the prospect of a US attack from central Asia.
South and west of Afghanistan an armada of US warships was to be reinforced by B-52 heavy bombers and high-altitude spy planes stationed at air bases in friendly countries, an air force official told AFP.
"They will be moving shortly if they haven't started," the official said, while White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said: "The president has made it abundantly clear that this nation is preparing for war."
In Kabul the Taliban Islamic regime insisted that it could not bend to Washington's demand that it hand over Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born radical said by Washington to be behind the September 11 terror attacks on US cities.
"If Osama leaves of his own accord, nobody will stop him. But handing him over to the United States is impossible," said Abdul Hai Mutmaen, a spokesman for the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Mutawakel said: "If the US attacks Afghanistan we will have no option but to pursue jihad [holy war]."
The Taliban's continued defiance put it firmly in the firing line in Bush's "war on terrorism," and exposed it to massive reprisals from the US military force converging on the fragile and unstable, war-wracked region.
Bush has vowed to use every military and political means to hunt down bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network of Islamic radicals, which Washington blames for the suicide attacks on New York and Washington that left more than 6,800 dead.
Washington has built an unprecedented coalition of international supporters for what Bush has dubbed his "war on terrorism", but the issue of where US jets and troops would be based before launching attacks could still raise tensions.
Hard-line Islamic supporters of bin Laden held protests in Pakistan and other countries which have given the US mission their blessing, and the US daily the Washington Post reported that Saudi Arabia has refused the Americans the use of air bases on its soil to launch attacks. The Pentagon could not confirm this.
But if the reports from Uzbekistan are confirmed it would be a sign that Washington has succeeded in convincing at least one of Afghanistan's northern neighbours to join the rapidly growing group of countries offering support.
Diplomatic sources said the United States also had helicopters, used in earlier in joint exercises between Uzbekistan and NATO forces, stationed in Chirchik, 40 kilometers from Tashkent.
The support of Moscow would be a key to securing the support of the former Soviet republics in Asia. Bush held talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on Saturday, the Interfax news agency reported.
In another victory for Bush's diplomatic offensive the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) broke off relations with the Taliban, leaving only Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as contacts with the outside world.
"The foreign ministry has asked the charge d'affaires at Afghanistan's embassy to leave the country within 24 hours," said the state WAM news agency, adding the UAE had tried and failed to persuade Kabul to give up Bin Laden.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia said they had no plans to cut links with the Taliban, but both have expressed their support for Washington, and Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has promised assistance to US forces.
The United States also secured the support of Turkey, the only majority Islamic member of NATO, which said it would allow US transport planes to use its bases and air space.
Washington's next diplomatic target will be Iran, with whom it has not had diplomatic relations since 1980. Tehran is no friend of the Taliban, but is a traditional US foe and has opposed military action.
Iran said it had received a message from Washington. British Foreign Minister Jack Straw, whose government has been Bush's strongest ally in the crisis, was due to visit Monday with a message from Washington.
After the September 11 attacks, in which suspected al-Qaeda militants crashed three hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, the United States won global support for reprisals.
On Friday a crisis meeting of EU foreign ministers agreed unanimously to support America's right to strike back at terrorism.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said the EU declaration "does not just express verbal solidarity [with the US], but indicates clearly that member states are ready to support necessary military action."
Bush has made the capture of bin Laden, a 44-year-old exiled Saudi multimillionaire and Islamic extremist, the key short-term goal of what he has warned the US people will be a long-term war against terrorism.
Bin Laden is believed to a "guest" of the Taliban in Afghanistan, where he first went in the 1980s to support resistance to the Soviet occupation.
Bin Laden's organization has since turned its anger against the United States in protest at the presence of US troops on Saudi soil -- the home of the Muslim holy cities of Medina and Mecca -- after the Gulf War, and he is the prime suspect in the bombing of US embassies in East Africa and the warship USS Cole.
Mutawakel, whose regime has sheltered Bin Laden since 1996, played down reports that bin Laden had already left Afghanistan in anticipation of US action, saying: "I have not heard any report that he has left Afghanistan."
Pakistani sources with close links to bin Laden also dismissed the rumors, saying bin Laden was eagerly awaiting his chance to fight the Americans.
"This is the moment he has been waiting for. His prayers are coming true," one source said.
In what may prove to be the first military contact between US forces and the militia, Taliban officials claimed Saturday to have shot down an unmanned US spy plane. Reports were contradictory however, and not confirmed by US sources.
In Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, four people were killed Friday during protests by hard-line Islamic groups, but a feared countryside wave of public protests did not fully materialize, giving the military regime breathing space.
Relieved authorities in Pakistan said fewer than 100,000 protesters heeded calls for protests after Friday prayers in a country of 140 million people.
Pope John Paul II, on a visit to Kazakhstan in the north of the troubled region also expressed concern over the imminent assault.
"Differences should be resolved not by recourse to arms, but by peaceful negotiations and dialogue," he said on arrival at Astana airport.
Aid agencies warned of a impending humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan, where they said an exodus of refugees fleeing drought, civil war and US attacks could top 1.5 million and faced water shortages -- KABUL (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
