The US-led coalition against terrorism on Tuesday admitted it had "dropped the ball" in its media campaign to explain the military operation in Afghanistan.
Newly appointed coalition spokesman Kenton Keith told reporters at his first daily briefing here in the Pakistani capital that officials had been slow to counter the impression that the campaign was a war against Islam.
"To a certain extent we dropped the ball," he said in a press briefing at the heavily guarded US Information Centre.
"We acknowledge that we should have been here earlier."
The Pakistani capital was the scene of daily press conferences from Afghanistan's Taliban militia until the military government of President Pervez Musharraf moved to muzzle the regime's ambassador, Abdul Salam Zaeef.
Zaeef had used the forum to air Taliban claims that the air strikes were a war by the West against Islam, that more than 1,500 civilians had been killed and that chemical weapons were being used.
US officials did not respond to his allegations until hours later when they held briefings in Washington.
"We have lost a step in this campaign, I think it's fair to say," said Keith, a former US ambassador.
"We have established a case that we are not fighting Islam. We are fighting a group that is trying to hijack Islam ... and we have to make sure that people understand that."
The US-led air strikes began on October 7 to punish the Taliban for its refusal to hand over alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden, blamed for the September 11 atrocities in New York and Washington.
The Taliban withstood the bombing for the first few weeks but have crumbled since November 9, when their troops began pulling out of the north.
They have since lost the capital Kabul and are confined to two remote strongholds in the northern city of Kunduz and a few southern provinces around their desert heartland of Kandahar -- Islamabad (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
