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(04/12/07 4:00am)
WASHINGTON – The Pentagon will lengthen tours of duty for all active-duty Army units in Iraq to 15 months from the current 12 months as the military struggles to supply enough troops for the conflict, two defense officials said Wednesday.\nDefense Secretary Robert Gates planned to announce the decision Wednesday afternoon, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.\nIt is the latest move by the Pentagon to cope with the strains of fighting two wars simultaneously and maintaining a higher troop level in Iraq as part of President Bush’s revised strategy for stabilizing Baghdad.\nOfficials on Monday said some 13,000 National Guard troops were receiving orders alerting them to prepare for possible deployment to Iraq – meaning a second tour for several thousand of them. Officials said a final decision to deploy the four infantry combat brigades later this year will be based on conditions on the ground and named specific Guard units based in Arkansas, Indiana, Oklahoma and Ohio.\nThe Pentagon said the Guard units would serve as replacement forces in the regular troop rotation for the war, and would not be connected to the controversial military buildup that was ordered by President Bush and which officials say is starting to show some success in curbing violence in Baghdad.\nWord has also emerged that Defense Department officials were considering a plan to extend by up to four months the tours of duty for as many as 15,000 U.S. troops already in Iraq as a way to maintain the buildup past the summer.\nThere are currently 145,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and when the buildup is completed by June, there would be more than 160,000, officials are calculating.\nDefense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Wednesday that with the way the rotation schedule is laid out now, the force size would begin to fall after August unless some action is taken – sending some troops earlier than expected or keeping some beyond their planned homecomings.\nHe declined to confirm details of any of the options under consideration.\n–AP Military Writer Robert Burns and AP Diplomatic Writer Barry Schweid contributed to this report.
(04/10/07 4:00am)
WASHINGTON – About 13,000 National Guard troops are receiving notice to prepare for possible deployment to Iraq, making it the second tour for several thousand of them.\nThe orders had been anticipated, but the specific units were not announced until Monday. \nThey are the Army National Guard’s 39th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, based in Little Rock, Ark.; 45th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Oklahoma City; the 76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Indianapolis; and the 37th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Columbus, Ohio.\nThe units would serve as replacement forces in the regular troop rotation for the war, and they would not be connected to the recent military buildup for security operations in Baghdad, the Pentagon said.\n“They are receiving alert orders now in order to provide them the maximum time to complete their preparations,” the Defense Department said. “It also provides a greater measure of predictability for family members and flexibility for employers to plan for military service of their employees.”\nThe final determination on whether the units will deploy will be made based on conditions on the ground in Iraq, officials said.\nThe troop alerts come as President Bush and Congress wrestle over legislation that would set timelines for troop withdrawals from Iraq.\nBush asked for more than $100 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year. Congress has approved the money, but the Senate added a provision calling for most U.S. combat troops to be out of Iraq by March 31, 2008. The House version demands a September 2008 withdrawal. Bush has vowed to veto any legislation that includes such deadlines.\nThe Army said some of the troops being alerted now have not yet served in Iraq, but some have served in the campaign in Afghanistan or elsewhere.\nSince November 2002, various elements of Indiana’s 76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Their last brigade-level rotation was in support of the Afghan campaign from May 2004 to August 2005.
(11/07/03 4:00pm)
WASHINGTON -- Just days before U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq, officials claiming to speak for a frantic Iraqi regime made a last-ditch effort to avert the war, but U.S. officials rebuffed the overture, the intermediary and U.S. officials said Thursday.\nAn influential adviser to the Defense Department received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman indicating that Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal, they said. The businessman, Imad Hage, told The Associated Press Thursday that he believes an opportunity was missed.\nBut senior U.S. defense and intelligence officials said Thursday the war could not have been averted by the offer; numerous such prewar leads were pursued, they said, and the Bush administration viewed them largely as stalling tactics.\n"The regime of Saddam Hussein had ample -- well beyond ample -- opportunity to avoid war," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a Pentagon press conference.\nThe White House and State Department played down the offer.\n"The United States exhausted every legitimate and credible opportunity to resolve this peacefully," presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said. "Saddam Hussein could have averted military action. He had a number of opportunities to do so."\nHe noted that the United States had given Saddam 48 hours to leave Iraq and avert war but that he had refused.\nMcClellan refused to say whether the purported Iraqi effort to avert the war was brought to President Bush's attention.\nA State Department spokesman, Adam Ereli, said, "We never received any legitimate or credible opportunity to resolve the world's differences with Iraq in a peaceful manner."\n"What we did see were vague overtures through third parties that appeared to be focused on attempts to forestall military action, as opposed to fulfilling U.N. Security Council resolution requirements," Ereli said.\nThe chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service and other Iraqi officials had told Hage that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction and offered to let American troops and experts do an independent search, said officials who discussed the matter only on condition of anonymity.\nThe Iraqi officials also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who was being held in Baghdad, an offer that became public in February.\nIraq said long before the war -- and captured officials still maintain -- that the country had no unconventional weapons. Though none has been found in seven months of searching, finding the weapons and overthrowing Saddam were the main reasons the Bush administration gave for going to war. \nHage, speaking to The Associated Press in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, said he had six meetings -- five in Beirut and one in Baghdad -- with senior Iraqi intelligence officials in the three months before the U.S.-led invasion March 20.\nHe said he believed the Iraqis he spoke to were desperate to avoid war.\n"Definitely these people feared for their life and they realized that the threat was real," Hage said. "They were motivated for some deal, that some deal could be achieved ..."\nDefense Department officials confirmed the prewar overture, first reported late Wednesday by ABC News and The New York Times. But they dismissed the idea that the offer could have averted war, since numerous other efforts by the United Nations and others had failed.\n"Iraq and Saddam had ample opportunity through highly credible sources over a period of several years to take action to avoid war and had the means to use highly credible channels to do that," said Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita.\n"Nobody needed to use questionable channels to convey messages," he said in a statement.\nDuring the run-up to the war there was a wide variety of people sending signals that some Iraqis might want to negotiate, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Thursday, adding that they came via foreign intelligence services, other governments, third parties, "charlatans and independent actors."\nAll leads that were "plausible and even some that weren't" were followed up, he said on condition of anonymity. But no one offering a deal was in a position to make an acceptable one, the official said, asserting that most were made just to stall the invasion.\nIn the case of Hage, messages from Baghdad beginning in February were portrayed by Iraqi officials as having Saddam's endorsement, though that could not be verified.\nIn early March, Richard Perle, an adviser to top Pentagon officials, met Hage in London, officials said. According to both men, Hage laid out the Iraqis' position and pressed the Iraqi request for a direct meeting with Perle or other U.S. representatives.\nA defense official said the CIA authorized Perle's meeting with the Iraqis, but eventually told him they didn't want to pursue the channel. But a senior U.S. intelligence official said CIA officials are unaware of any conversations with Perle on this subject and are unaware of any such authorization.\nHage previously lived in suburban Washington, where he started an insurance company. He moved to Lebanon in the 1990s and has been trying for 10 years to break into politics there but so far with little success.
(03/27/03 4:16am)
WASHINGTON -- Surprised by the power of Iraq's paramilitaries, the Pentagon is adjusting its tactics in the push to Baghdad, defense officials said Wednesday.\nInstead of racing to the capital, parts of the American-led invasion are being forced to focus much more on pockets of resistance and ambushes in the south, including from the Fedayeen Saddam, a militia that has been rallying other Iraqis to fight and in some cases, reportedly keeping them from surrendering.\nPentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said Wednesday the militia activity was not slowing the war, with U.S. Army and Marine forces closer to Baghdad continuing to make progress overnight.\nWhile British forces battled more than 1,000 die-hard Iraqi loyalists for control of the southern city of Basra, the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment fought a tough battle near Najaf in central Iraq.\nThe unexpected level of resistance from militia and battering sandstorms are creating a drag on troops headed to Baghdad, where President Saddam Hussein and his regime are expected to make their last stand, said officials at the Pentagon and the U.S. military command center in Qatar.\nStorms grounded scores of coalition aircraft Tuesday, blinded the array of electronic eyes needed to target Iraq and were gumming up guns, breaking down engines and generally slowing a military campaign designed for speed.\nThe Fedayeen -- which means "those ready to sacrifice themselves for Saddam" -- are accused of organizing such battlefield ruses as posing as civilians and faking surrenders in order to ambush invading forces.\nIntelligence officials say there could be 30,000 to 60,000 of them, with chapters assigned to each Iraqi province to assure loyalty to Saddam. Other militia groups, including those from Saddam's Baath Party, are also operating, and some have been captured, officials said.\nOne Defense Department official said commanders were surprised by the capability of the Fedayeen, another by its brutality in forcing regular Iraqi army troops to fight. Another official said the group has shown tenacity and that it was expected that it would present the biggest problem in Baghdad rather than in the south.\nThe Air Force used an experimental bomb to try to knock out Iraq's state-run television. Officials declined to describe the weapon, though they have said in recent months that they were developing a bomb that would emit an electromagnetic pulse to disrupt computers, communications and other equipment.\nAlso in the package of strikes were Tomahawk cruise missiles and other precision-guided bombs. Television broadcast were back on the air about eight hours later.\nOfficials expressed caution about a report that some of the soldiers from a maintenance unit captured over the weekend were executed as they attempted to surrender.\nOfficials said they had one report and that they were looking into it. Five from the unit were shown on Iraqi television as prisoners of war.\nDefense officials also revised the number of Iraqi forces killed in fierce fighting Tuesday to 350 for a key Euphrates River crossing about 90 miles south of Baghdad. The number had been widely estimated Tuesday at more than 150 Iraqi fighters and possibly as many as 500. No American casualties were reported from the battle, which pitted an American armored division against Iraqi infantry.\nThe prospect of a chemical attack loomed Wednesday. Marines in southern Iraq Tuesday found more evidence that Iraq was planning an attack with chemical weapons: caches of gas masks, protective gear and nerve agent antidotes in a hospital U.S. officials said Iraqi soldiers used as an illegal staging area.\nOfficials have said that the closer troops draw to Baghdad, the more likely the possibility a cornered regime will strike out with weapons of mass destruction. Saddam has said he has none and President Bush has said his refusal to disarm is the reason for the war.\nAssociated Press reporter Ellen Knickmeyer, traveling with Marines in central Iraq, contributed to this report.
(12/12/02 4:52am)
WASHINGTON -- Ending an embarrassing faceoff with Yemen, Bush administration officials said Wednesday they secured an agreement from the Arab nation to no longer buy Scud missiles from North Korea.\nBut the understanding was not reached until after the United States was forced to release to Yemen a vessel containing North Korean-made missiles.\n"We have no choice but to obey international law," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. "What Yemen has done does not provide a threat to the United States. We do have ongoing concerns about North Korea's efforts to sell arms around the world."\nFleischer said the Bush administration will use the incident to strengthen treaties and international agreements dealing with the proliferation of missiles. Bush ordered his nonproliferation experts to begin working on ways to close gaps in international laws that already curb nuclear, biological and chemical sales, administration officials said.\nForces from the amphibious assault ship USS Nassau had been aboard the detained vessel since Tuesday awaiting orders on what to do with it and the weapons, Pentagon officials said.\nThe incident underscored the challenges Bush faces in the war on terrorism, when the lines dividing allies from potential enemies are often blurred. Yemen is a haven for terrorists, including Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, but the government has pledged to help Bush fight terrorism in the Middle East.\nTwo senior administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Yemen had recently agreed in principle to stop buying missiles from North Korea but that the agreement had not taken effect before the incident.\nOn the missiles the U.S. released Wednesday, Fleischer said Yemen promised not to turn them over to anybody else.\nFleischer said U.S. intelligence had identified the ship and its cargo from early on in its voyage, and knew it was headed somewhere in the Middle East. He said the United States feared a rogue nation might be the destination; officials said privately Iraq was a possibility.\n"Yemen is an ally of the United States, in that sense it does not provide a threat to the United States," Fleischer said.\n"Yemen is doing everything it can to help us on the war on terrorism," the spokesman said.\nStill, it was clear U.S. officials were disappointed in Yemen's actions. Fleischer was asked why the vessel flew no national flag and why the missiles were hidden aboard the ship. He tersely referred the last question to Yemen.\nThere was disagreement inside the administration over whether Yemen had broken its word.\nDefense officials said the shipment -- 15 missiles as well as missile parts and fuel -- violated an agreement Yemen made with the United States not to buy such equipment from North Korea, which Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has called the world's worst missile proliferator. Other officials, including a consensus inside the White House, said Yemen did not violate the agreement.\nA Yemeni official told The Associated Press in San'a that Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Kerbi summoned U.S. Ambassador Edmund J. Hull to protest the seizure and ask for the return of the equipment, which was for "defensive purposes."\nIntelligence officials had tracked the vessel for weeks and the Spanish military stopped it Monday as it sailed 600 miles off the Horn of Africa, without a flag designating its country of origin. The weapons were hidden under a cargo of cement and crew members initially lied about their identity, saying they were Cambodian, officials said.\nThe seizure came in an interdiction operation that is part of the U.S.-led war on terrorism, officials said, adding that they feared that the weapons were destined for a terrorist state.\nThe decision to release the missiles came after discussions with Yemeni officials by Secretary of State Colin Powell and Vice President Dick Cheney, Fleischer said.\n"We have looked at this matter thoroughly. There is no provision under international law prohibiting Yemen from accepting delivery of missiles from North Korea. While there is authority to stop and search, in this instance there is no clear authority to seize the shipment of Scud missiles from North Korea to Yemen and therefore the merchant vessel is being released," Fleischer said.\nThe Yemenis have given the United States assurances that they will not transfer the missiles to anyone, Fleischer said.\nThe Bush administration in August imposed sanctions on the North Korean company Changgwang Sinyong Corp. for selling Scud missile parts to Yemen. At that time, U.S. authorities asked Yemen why it bought the parts, and that country apologized and promised not to do so again, two defense officials said Wednesday.\nThe shipment seized Monday was destined for Yemen's army, Pentagon officials said.\nNorth Korea was officially silent about the interception but said it had the right to develop weapons to defend itself.\n"It is necessary to heighten vigilance against the U.S. strategy for world supremacy and 'anti-terrorism war,'" the North's official newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said in an editorial. "All countries are called upon to build self-reliant military power by their own efforts."\nYemen has been a nominal ally in the global war on terrorism despite strained relations with Washington. Yemen is Osama bin Laden's ancestral homeland, was the site of the bombing of a U.S. warship and has vast lawless areas where al Qaeda members and other terrorists are believed to hide out.\nNorth Korea shocked U.S. officials by admitting in October that it had a secret program to enrich uranium to make nuclear weapons. The Bush administration has vowed to try to solve the problem through diplomacy, though Bush already had named North Korea as part of a three-nation "axis of evil" and administration officials have worried that the reclusive Communist dictatorship has become a "missiles-R-us" seller to countries such as Iran and Libya.\nThe ship carrying the missiles was stopped by two vessels from the Spanish navy participating in Operation Enduring Freedom, the U.S.-led global anti-terrorism coalition, said Alberto Martinez Arias, a spokesman for Spain's Defense Ministry in Madrid.\nCrews from the Spanish ships Navarra and Patino stopped the unflagged ship Sosan east of the island of Socotora and called U.S. authorities for assistance, Martinez said. The Spanish navy stopped and boarded the ship after its crew refused to identify themselves.\nYemen's port of Aden was the site of the October 2000 terrorist attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 sailors.\n__\nAssociated Press reporters Matt Kelley and Ron Fournier contributed to this report.
(10/23/02 4:35am)
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government is preparing to free a small number of prisoners from its high-security jail in Cuba, in what would be the first release of combatants who are no longer considered a terrorist threat, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday.\n"There are some people likely to come out of the other end of the chute," Rumsfeld told a Pentagon press conference.\nOther officials said on condition of anonymity that it could be within days.\nRumsfeld said officials were vetting the prisoners to make sure they were not candidates for prosecution, no longer of any intelligence value, and not a threat to the United States and its allies.\nThe first batch to be let go includes "a relatively small number" of men, he said, adding that he didn't know their nationalities.\nPakistani officials have said a visit to the prison turned up a number of Pakistanis who do not represent a threat to the United States.\nThe government, a major U.S. ally in the counter-terror war, has asked the men to allowed to return to Pakistan. It's unclear how many other countries have sought release of their nationals.\n"We vetted them and gave our assessment ... that some of the detainees did not pose a threat" to the United States, said Asad Hayauddin, spokesman for the Pakistan Embassy in Washington.\nThere are reported to be some 58 Pakistanis in Guantanamo, 100 Saudi Arabians, a dozen Kuwaitis and so on. In all, the United States is holding 598 men from 42 countries who it has labeled as enemy combatants, saying it may legally hold them until the end of hostilities. It hasn't made clear whether that means the end of the campaign in Afghanistan or the entire global war which is expected to go on for years.\nIt was unclear whether the men to be released would be freed completely or simply transferred to some other country for detention, Rumsfeld said.\nThe U.S. government has said for months that some of the prisoners might eventually be prosecuted, released to other countries for prosecution or held indefinitely.\nThough rules for military tribunals were announced nearly seven months ago, no one has been ordered sent before a tribunal for trial.\nSome of the men have been held for nearly a year since being rounded up during the air war that opened the military campaign in Afghanistan on Oct. 7. Transfers from Afghanistan to Guantanamo began in January.\nThe main task with them over the months has been to interrogate them for information that might help prevent future attacks and catch other suspects, officials have said.\n"Over the course of our efforts against terrorism, we expect there will be numerous releases, and presumably transfers, to other countries," Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Davis said, declining to give further detail.\nOne official said that for safety reasons, no transfer will be announced until the prisoner or prisoners have safely arrived wherever they are being sent.\nOfficials fear al Qaeda will track down anyone who is released and try to get information from them, forcibly if need be, on such things as U.S. interrogation methods, security procedures, details of other detainees and any potential weaknesses in security at Guantanamo.\nUp until now, transfers into Guantanamo have been one-way trips for the vast majority of prisoners. The only ones acknowledged sent out by the U.S. government so far have been a man with mental health problems and prisoners determined to be Americans, who were sent for detention in the states instead.
(10/04/02 8:16pm)
WASHINGTON -- Allied forces dropped thousands of leaflets over southern Iraq Thursday, warning Saddam Hussein's troops against firing on British and U.S. planes that have been patrolling the no-fly zone.\nIraqi forces fired on aircraft delivering the leaflets and allied forces bombed an air defense operations center in response, said officials at the U.S. Central Command.\nIt was the first known direct warning from the Pentagon to Iraq's military rank and file since the Bush administration launched its campaign to topple Saddam. Defense officials said on condition of anonymity that it is not directly related to another leaflet campaign in which the Pentagon plans to warn Iraqi officers against firing chemical or biological weapons in the event of U.S. military action to remove Saddam.\nThe retaliatory action brought to 46 the number of "strike days" reported this year by the United States and the United Kingdom coalition put together to patrol zones set up to protect Iraqi minorities following the 1991 Gulf War. On some days, more than one area is bombed.\nOfficials said coalition aircraft dropped 120,000 leaflets depicting a fighter jet bombing a missile launcher and a radar site with the message: "Iraqi ADA (air defense artillery) Beware! Don't track or fire on coalition aircraft!"\n"The destruction experienced by your colleagues in other air defense locations is a response to your continuing aggression toward planes of the coalition forces," leaflets written in Arabic said in reference to the four dozen times coalition planes have struck back this year.\n"No tracking or firing on these aircraft will be tolerated. You could be next," said an English translation released by defense officials.\n"We were telling them 'Don't shoot at us or we'll shoot back'," said Navy Commander Frank Merriman, a spokesman for Central Command in Tampa, Fla. "And they were shooting at that aircraft that was dropping the leaflets!"\nHe said a similar leaflet drop was done last October to try to halt the firing on planes patrolling the restricted zones over Iraq.\nAnother official insisted Thursday's action was not related to any possible war with Iraq, portraying it as something done from time to time to remind Iraqi gunners they target coalition planes at their peril. Three officials said they didn't know how often it had been done before. They discussed the situation only on grounds of anonymity.\n"Today's strike came after Iraq air defenses fired anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles at coalition aircraft," said a statement from the Central Command.\nIn their retaliation, coalition planes targeted precision-guided weapons at the site, an operations center and air defense headquarters for the sector near Tallil, some 160 miles southeast of Baghdad at 4:30 a.m. EDT Thursday. There was no assessment immediately available on how much damage was done.\nIt was the third time in nine days that planes launched strikes in the area, trying to destroy communications equipment, control radar and a surface-to-air missile launcher, in missions Sept. 25 and 28.\nRepeat missions have become common in recent weeks. Coalition aircraft for the sixth time in a month struck this week near Al Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, because Iraqis keep moving mobile radar equipment to the area, Pentagon officials said.\nIraq considers the patrols a violation of its sovereignty and frequently shoots at the planes. In response, coalition pilots try to bomb Iraqi air defense systems.
(08/29/02 7:14am)
WASHINGTON -- Intelligence officials may have uncovered the hideouts of two more key al Qaeda figures who escaped Afghanistan -- right across the border in Iran.\nAnd one of the men was previously believed dead.\nA U.S. official said Wednesday the United States has received reports on the whereabouts of Saif al-Adil, an Egyptian who has been security chief for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and wanted in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa; and Abu Hafs, the Mauritanian operational planner possibly linked to those bombings and the failed plot to blow up unidentified U.S. targets on New Year's Day 2000.\nU.S. officials previously said Hafs was killed in January in Afghanistan. New information from foreign intelligence sources and other sources now indicates he survived the war and escaped, said a Pentagon official, who like the other administration official, spoke on condition of anonymity.\nSecretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has said repeatedly that al Qaeda figures are hiding in Iran, Iraq and dozens of other countries. Suspects have been captured in places ranging from Singapore to Morocco to Yemen to Bosnia.\nBut this is the first time the location of a possible hide-out has been made public before a person was captured.\nSpeculation on bin Laden's whereabouts continues to focus on the likelihood that he survived the U.S. bombing in Afghanistan and may be hiding somewhere across the border in Pakistan's tribal areas.\nSen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday that he assumes bin Laden is still alive.\n"What I believe is what I have been told by our intelligence agencies, which is that the best analysis is that bin Laden is probably still alive, living in that region between Afghanistan and the tribal territories of Pakistan," he told CNN.\nGraham said it would be important to capture or kill bin Laden, but that would not mean the end of al Qaeda.\n"I hope we get bin Laden -- knowing finally that he is either dead or in custody will make us sleep better at night," he said.\nThe Bush administration called Iran's behavior "unacceptable."\n"We call on and urge the Iranian government not to offer terrorists a safe haven," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan, adding that "we want to be clear to the Iranian government on that message."\nBecause the information was based on intelligence reports, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher would not discuss specifics about the matter.\nThe men are among some two dozen terrorist suspects on a wanted list kept by the U.S. Central Command, which runs the Afghan campaign. They are part of a still smaller group that the Pentagon fears could rise among figures left in the scattered al Qaeda network to become key planners in future attacks.\n"There are six, eight, ten, 12 people who could pick up that apparatus today, may even have done so today already," Rumsfeld said at a recent press conference. "They know where the bank accounts are, they know who they trained, they know what the training manual says and what these guys are capable of doing. They know where their sources of information are and how to communicate."\nU.S. officials said Wednesday that the information on the men's whereabouts had not been confirmed.\nIn Tehran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi denied the report, the official Islamic Republic News Agency said.\n"Based on its responsibilities, Iran will resolutely fight terrorism, and preventing terrorists from entering Iran's territory is in full conformity with Iran's national interests. It is ugly that some American circles make accusations against Iran without any evidence," Asefi was quoted as saying.\n"No member of al Qaeda is in Iran and Tehran's policy is not to give refuge to this group," Asefi was quoted as saying.\nAbu Hafs is a key spiritual counselor in al Qaeda also known as Mahfouz Ould al-Walid.\nAl-Adil, bin Laden's security chief, was thought to be taking over operations following the death of Mohammed Atef, bin Laden's top military commander.\nThe story on their whereabouts was first reported in Wednesday's editions of The Washington Post. The newspaper cited Arab intelligence sources as saying the pair was planning al Qaeda operations from Iran.\nIt's unclear to what degree the government of Iran might be sanctioning the presence of al Qaeda within its territory. The Bush administration has said Iranian hard-liners who control the military and intelligence services are working with al Qaeda.\nAnother al Qaeda leader named Abu Musab Zarqawi went to Iran after the U.S. war started in Afghanistan, but is believed to have left the country.\nIran says it has arrested 150 people since late March on charges of terrorism and espionage. It isn't clear if the alleged terrorists were members of al Qaeda or of an opposition group Iranian officials usually refer to as terrorists and counter-revolutionaries.\nEarlier this month, the Saudi government also said Iran had expelled 16 al Qaeda members to Saudi Arabia.
(04/03/02 4:31am)
WASHINGTON -- Al Qaeda terrorists fleeing Afghanistan have been allowed safe passage through Iran, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday, criticizing Tehran for a second straight day as a supporter of global terrorists. \n"It certainly would be helpful if they were more cooperative, and they have not been, particularly," Rumsfeld said. \nU.S. officials have said in recent months that Tehran had failed to move decisively against al Qaeda figures who fled over the western border of Afghanistan to Iran. \nAnd they have accused Iran of secretly working with warlords and other allies in western Afghanistan to undermine the U.S.-backed administration of interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai. \nIn a rebuke Monday, Rumsfeld said Iran, Iraq and Syria "are inspiring and financing a culture of political murder and suicide bombing" in the Middle East. Rumsfeld specifically accused Iran and Syria of funneling arms to Lebanon for use by terrorists and criticized Iraq for offering payments of up to $25,000 to families of Palestinian suicide bombers. \nRumsfeld was asked Tuesday to be more specific about how unhelpful Tehran has been to the Bush administration war against terrorism. \n"There is no question but that al Qaeda have moved into and found sanctuary in Iran. And there is no question but that al Qaeda have moved into Iran and out of Iran to the south and dispersed to some other countries," he said. \n"I can't think of a thing I've said that anyone by the wildest stretch of their imagination could characterize as helpful," Rumsfeld said at a press conference with Norwegian Defense Minister Kristin Krohn Devold. "They're all harmful and contributing to the problems with respect to global terrorists." \nHe acknowledged that the Iranian-Afghan border is porous and that it's impossible to know with certainty everything going on there. \nCIA Director George Tenet also recently said in congressional testimony that the United States sought help from other countries bordering Afghanistan to which Taliban and al Qaeda have been escaping. He mentioned Pakistan and Uzbekistan. \nAmong those believed to have fled to Iran is key al Qaeda organizer Abu Musab Zarqawi, a U.S. official said. \nZarqawi, who goes by the alias of Ahmad Fadeel al-Khalayleh, is considered among the top 25 al Qaeda leaders. He is believed to have helped organize a foiled millennium bombing plot in Jordan and to have fled Afghanistan to Iran sometime after U.S.-led air strikes began in October. His whereabouts now are unclear, the official said. \nIran has rejected charges it is tied to the those fleeing Afghanistan. \n"We have no common ground with these terrorist groups and the Taliban," Vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar said early last month. \nAsked Tuesday how the United States could get at the problem inside Iran, Rumsfeld said "ultimately the (Iranian) people are going to have to change their circumstance." \n"The people are being repressed. They are being denied rights that most other people around the world seem to find a way to get for themselves," he said. "And I suspect that the leadership in Iran will find itself with difficulties over time." \nIran condemned the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on America and offered help uprooting terrorism. At the time, Iran also publicized opposition to Afghanistan's then-rulers, the Taliban. \nRelations chilled when President Bush named Iran as part of an "axis of evil" with Iraq and North Korea.
(09/28/01 3:53am)
WASHINGTON -- Two Air Force generals have been authorized to order the military to shoot down any civilian airliner that appears to be threatening U.S. cities, Pentagon officials said Thursday. \nSeeking to reassure America's travelers of their safety, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said: "There are a lot of safeguards in place." \nHe said he had crafted the new rules of engagement for military pilots with Gen. Henry H. Shelton, who is retiring as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. \n"The last thing in the world (we) want to do is engage a commercial aircraft," Shelton said. "And so don't get the impression that anyone who's flying around out there has a loose trigger finger." \nRumsfeld was asked if Americans should be worried about the policy since passengers could be trying to overcome a hijacker as people attempted on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania Sept. 11. That was the only one of four hijacked planes that did not hit a terrorist target. \n"The rules of engagement are addressed on a continuing basis with a great deal of care and sensitivity to all of the points that you've raised and others have raised," Rumsfeld said, refusing to provide details. \n"And I can assure that they are under continuous review and given the most careful consideration. And it seems to me that is the same kind of assurance that the American people get with respect to a lot of things that the Defense Department's involved in." \nWhite House spokesman Scott McClelland said every attempt will be made to follow the chain of command from the commander in chief on down before any order to down a plane is issued and the decision would be made only by very senior-level officials. \n"It's an enormous burden to make that decision. As an absolute last resort, the most senior-level official at the absolute last moment of decision would have the authority to make that decision," McClelland said. \n He said the circumstances for the decision would have to involve a plane headed nose down and posing a threat to the safety of Americans \n Michael Perini, director of public affairs for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, stressed that only under the most extraordinary circumstances could the generals act without having consulted with the president, secretary of defense or other higher-ups — only as a last resort and only if there simply was not enough time to consult. \nFrom NORAD offices in Colorado, Perini said he could not discuss a specific situation in which the regional commanders might take such action because it would reveal too much about military planning for the defense of U.S. airspace.