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US Marines raid Afghan compound as international force comes in
Tuesday January 1, 10:02 PM AFP
Afghanistan entered 2002 on an optimistic note preparing for the arrival of an international security force, while Washington broadened the scope of both its war on terrorism and hunt for Osama bin Laden.
Some 149 soldiers from 18 countries left Britain to fly to Kabul to prepare the ground for the UN-mandated force, the German defence ministry said, while in Afghanistan US Marines were reported to have launched a major raid.
According to a CNN report from Kandahar airport in southern Afghanistan "a couple of hundred" Marines were carrying out an operation against a compound in Helmand province to "find intelligence relating to al-Qaeda and the Taliban."
Meanwhile, scores of bin Laden's al-Qaeda followers were to be transfered from Pakistani custody to a US base in Afghanistan to face interrogation about the fate of the elusive Saudi-born radical, Islamabad's Dawn daily said.
On the broader anti-terror front, Washington announced it was freezing the assets of six European groups: five militant outfits from both sides of Northern Ireland's sectarian divide and one Spanish hard-left group.
US President George W. Bush predicted that bin Laden would be caught "pretty soon", but a US military spokesman denied reports that US Marines were closing in on the former leader of the ousted Taliban regime, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
America's military campaign against the remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaeda ran into controversy Monday after villagers claimed that at least 70 civilians were killed in a US air-raid on a suspected arms dump.
The Pentagon blamed al-Qaeda for any civilian deaths, claiming that the hardline Islamic group was hiding among the local population, and on Tuesday an Afghan official of the new post-Taliban government backed its position.
Border Affairs Minister Amanullah Zadran said bombing was the only way to destroy a large cache of weapons stored in a house guarded by Taliban and al-Qaeda sympathisers in the village of Nizai Qala in Paktia province.
"There was no intention to kill innocent people," he said. "In Afghanistan we have a proverb: when dry wood burns you can also burn wet wood."
A US military spokesman acknowledged that some civilians could have died in the raid, but insisted that the night-long bombardment had been necessary.
"It is well known to us that there were al-Qaeda/Taliban leadership (in the village). That is why we attacked the compound," said Major Bill Harrison. "We feel it was a legitimate military target."
Since the collapse of Taliban control both bin Laden, who has been blamed for the September 11 attacks on US cities, and Mullah Omar have fled their former Afghan strongholds and pursuing US-led troops.
Bin Laden is widely rumoured to have left the country, but recent reports suggest that Omar and a hardcore of his armed followers are holed up in high-ground northwest of his former Kandahar headquarters in Helmand province.
US media reported Tuesday that a force of US Marines based in Kandahar had set off in helicopters to Omar's supposed new base in Baghran but a spokesman for US Central Command in Tampa, Florida denied this.
Instead, according to CNN, the Marines and allied Afghan forces were headed to a large compound in Helmand where they hoped to seize information on Omar and his remaining supporters.
CNN said the Marines had not been involved in any combat and were working alongside anti-Taliban forces loyal to Kandahar strongman Gul Agha.
Bush, speaking near his ranch in Crawford, Texas, did not respond directly to the latest reports of US military action, but said: "Bin Laden is on the run, and any time you get a person running, it means you're going to get him pretty soon... It's just a matter of time."
Officials in Afghanistan's new government have repeatedly claimed that bin Laden has left Afghan territory for Pakistan -- a claim denied by Islamabad -- as have many of his surviving al-Qaeda fighters.
American network ABC News, citing unnamed military officials, reported that US armed forces had "circumstantial but compelling" evidence that bin Laden was alive and still in charge of his followers.
The report quoted one of the officials as saying the United States had intercepted al-Qaeda communications originating in Iran.
Efforts to pinpoint bin Laden have included questioning al-Qaeda and Taliban members captured by US and allied forces in Afghanistan, and on Tuesday a Pakistani daily reported that fighters caught in Pakistan had been handed over.
About 150 arrested bin Laden followers will be shifted from a northern Pakistani jail in Kohat to a US prison camp in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar for more intensive interrogation, Dawn said, citing official sources.
Dawn said the detained al-Qaeda men -- mostly from Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other unspecified Arabian peninsula countries -- would be flown to Kandahar in batches.
US forces built a prison camp at Kandahar airport after Marines moved in to occupy the facility last month.
A US military spokesman said Monday that Washington was holding 180 prisoners from al-Qaeda or the former ruling Taliban militia which had sheltered bin Laden -- 164 are being held in Kandahar.
Seventy British troops arrived in Kabul on Monday as Afghan Interior Minister Yunus Qanooni and British Major General John McColl, who is to lead the international force, finally signed an agreement setting up an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
The multinational force will number between 3,000 and 4,000 troops to help provide security as the new government of interim leader Hamid Karzai tries to rebuild the nation after the ouster of the hard-line Taliban militia.
Britain will lead the force for the first three months of its six-month deployment in Afghanistan, and its troops will be joined by a large German contingent and forces from 17 other nations.
The European groups affected by the new US sanctions include five from Northern Ireland: the Continuity IRA, the Loyalist Volunteer Force, the Orange Volunteers, the Red Hand Defenders and the Ulster Defense Association.
Also affected was Grapo, a group from Spain also known as the First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance League.
The move by Secretary of State Colin Powell brings the US list of terrorist groups in line with one unveiled last week by the European Union that included organizations not already sanctioned by Washington.
"We have consistently said that the fight against terrorism requires international cooperation in the fullest measure," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said in a statement. "The secretary's decision supports the important step taken last week by our European partners."
There are fears that the US-led "coalition against terror" could be weakened by the tensions between Pakistan and India, which came to a head last month after Delhi accused Islamabad of sponsoring a suicide attack on its parliament.
Both countries have massed thousands of troops at their frontier, mainly in the disputed Kashmir region, and there has been cross-border shelling.
But Pakistan has launched a crack-down on the Kashmiri separatist groups held responsible for the latest attacks on Indian targets -- arresting at least 100 officials and activists -- easing tensions and winning US praise
Tuesday January 1, 8:29 PM AFP
Afghanistan's new government hss defended the US bombing campaign which helped bring it to power, saying American planes had "no other choice" but to attack an eastern village despite innocent deaths.
The Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) says at least 92 civilians were killed in the US bombing of Nizai Qala in Paktia province overnight Saturday. Local people said at least 70 people including some foreigners reportedly died.
Border Affairs Minister Amanullah Zadran said bombing was the only way to destroy a large weapons cache in a farmhouse guarded by Taliban and al-Qaeda sympathisers.
"I'm not supporting the bombing (of innocent people) but there was no other choice," Zadran told AFP. "By land it would have been risky. It was a very insecure situation. There is still some opposition in the area."
He added: "There was no intention to kill innocent people. In Afghanistan we have a proverb: when dry wood burns you can also burn wet wood."
AIP quoted a witness as saying there were no al-Qaeda or Taliban members there.
Zadran, who visited Paktia on Monday, said that when al-Qaeda and Taliban fled the province, they left "truckloads of weapons, documents and vehicles" in the farmhouse.
"The Americans bombed it and the people left there were killed," he said. "There were no al-Qaeda and Taliban there but their supporters were in the house."
He said innocent people were killed because an ammunition dump had been created in the heart of the village.
A US military spokesman expressed regret at any civilian deaths but said the raid hit a legitimate target.
The US began waging war in Afghanistan on October 7 to flush out suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda fighters and to help topple the Taliban regime which sheltered him.
The Taliban lost their last bastion on December 7 but bin Laden is still unaccounted for as is Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Some 200 US Marines based at Kandahar airport in the south have launched an operation against a large compound in neighbouring Helmand province to gather intelligence on the Taliban and al-Qaeda, the US television network CNN reported Tuesday.
CNN, in a report from the airport, said the operation could last until Wednesday morning but gave no location for the compound. The Marines had not been involved in any combat and were working alongside anti-Taliban forces loyal to Kandahar governor Gul Agha.
There have been unconfirmed reports that Omar may be hiding in the Helmand town of Baghran but CNN stressed that the Marine operation was not targeting Baghran.
The Pentagon has denied reports that the Marines had launched an operation in the Baghran region to hunt for Omar.
In other moves against al-Qaeda, Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported that about 150 of its members would be shifted from a Pakistani jail to an American prison camp at Kandahar airport for more intensive interrogation.
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and Pakistani investigators have already been questioning the detainees -- mostly Arabs -- at Kohat jail in northern Pakistan.
Hundreds of al-Qaeda slipped over the border into Pakistan to escape intense air and ground attacks last month on their Tora Bora mountain stronghold in eastern Afghanistan.
Washington says bin Laden masterminded the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington which killed some 3,000 people.
The new Afghan government faces challenges imposing its authority through the country, parts of which are still controlled by local warlords.
But AIP said pro-government forces have crushed an armed uprising by a local militia chief after six weeks of sporadic clashes.
It said Northern Alliance forces late Monday captured the town of Darra Keyan, the stronghold of the minority Ismaili community in Baghlan province.
The Pakistan-based news service said a total of up to 300 fighters had been killed in fighting since last November.
Tuesday January 1, 7:15 PM AFP
Afghanistan entered 2002 on an optimistic note preparing for the arrival of an international security force, while Washington broadened the scope of both its war on terrorism and hunt for Osama bin Laden.
Scores of bin Laden's al-Qaeda followers were transfered from Pakistani custody to a US base in Afghanistan to face interrogation about the fate of the elusive Saudi-born radical, Islamabad's Dawn daily said.
Meanwhile on the broader anti-terror front Washington announced it was freezing the assets of six European groups: five militant outfits from both sides of Northern Ireland's sectarian divide and one Spanish hard-left group.
US President George W. Bush predicted that bin Laden would be caught "pretty soon", but a US military spokesman denied reports that US Marines were closing in the former leader of the ousted Taliban regime, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
America's military campaign against the remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaeda ran into controversy Monday after villagers claimed that at least 70 civilians were killed in a US air-raid on a suspected airms dump.
The Pentagon blamed al-Qaeda for any civilian deaths, claiming that the hardline Islamic group was hiding among the local population, and on Tuesday an Afghan official of the new post-Taliban government backed its position.
Border Affairs Minister Amanullah Zadran said bombing was the only way to destroy a large cache of weapons stored in a house guarded by Taliban and al-Qaeda sympathisers in the village of Nizai Qala in Paktia province.
"There was no intention to kill innocent people," he said. "In Afghanistan we have a proverb: when dry wood burns you can also burn wet wood."
A US military spokesman acknowledged that some civilians could have died in the raid, but insisted that the night-long bombardment had been necessary.
"It is well known to us that there were al-Qaeda/Taliban leadership (in the village). That is why we attacked the compound," said Major Bill Harrison. "We feel it was a legitimate military target."
Since the collapse of Taliban control both bin Laden, who has been blamed for the September 11 attacks on US cities, and Mullah Omar have fled their former Afghan strongholds and pursuing US-led troops.
Bin Laden is widely rumoured to have left the country, but recent reports suggest that Omar and a hardcore of his armed followers are holed up in high-ground northwest of his former Kandahar headquarters.
US media reported Tuesday that a force of US Marines based in Kandahar had set off in helicopters to track Omar down, but a spokesman for US Central Command in Tampa, Florida categorically denied this.
"Those reports are absolutely not true," said Major Bill Harrison told AFP, "No marines are leaving Kandahar airport."
CNN reported that US troops had launched an operation early Monday acting on "credible" information that Omar was in the Baghran region, 190 kilometres (120 miles) north of Kandahar.
Bush, speaking near his ranch in Crawford, Texas, did not respond directly to the latest reports of US military action, but said: "Bin Laden is on the run, and any time you get a person running, it means you're going to get him pretty soon... It's just a matter of time."
Officials in Afghanistan's new government have repeatedly claimed that bin Laden has left Afghan territory for Pakistan -- a claim denied by Islamabad -- as have many of his surviving al-Qaeda fighters.
American network ABC News, citing unnamed military officials, reported that US armed forces had "circumstantial but compelling" evidence that bin Laden was alive and still in charge of his followers.
The report quoted one of the officials as saying the United States had intercepted communications originating in Iran, in which the caller said: "You should keep bin Laden (using a code name) off of the television.
"He looks bad, he looks sick, and it is demoralizing to his people," the caller added, according to the report.
A visibly worn bin Laden appeared in a video recording broadcast last week by Al-Jazeera satellite television, based in Qatar -- but the tape is believed to have been made between December 7 and 11.
Efforts to pinpoint bin Laden have included questioning al-Qaeda and Taliban members captured by US and allied forces in Afghanistan, and on Tuesday a Pakistani daily reported that fighters caught in Pakistan had been handed over.
About 150 arrested bin Laden followers will be shifted from a northern Pakistani jail in Kohat to a US prison camp in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar for more intensive interrogation, Dawn said, citing official sources.
Dawn said the detained al-Qaeda men -- mostly from Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other unspecified Arabian peninsula countries -- would be flown to Kandahar in batches..
US forces built a prison camp at Kandahar airport after Marines moved in to occupy the facility last month.
A US military spokesman said Monday that Washington was holding 180 prisoners from al-Qaeda or the former ruling Taliban militia which had sheltered bin Laden -- 164 are being held in Kandahar.
Seventy British troops arrived in Kabul on Monday as Afghan Interior Minister Yunus Qanooni and British Major General John McColl, who is to lead the international force, finally signed the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
The multinational force will number between 3,000 and 4,000 troops to help provide security as the new government of interim leader Hamid Karzai tries to rebuild the nation after the ouster of the hard-line Taliban militia.
Britain will lead the force for the first three months of its six-month deployment in Afghanistan.
The European groups affected by the new US sanctions include five from Northern Ireland: the Continuity IRA, the Loyalist Volunteer Force, the Orange Volunteers, the Red Hand Defenders and the Ulster Defense Association.
Also affected was Grapo, a group from Spain also known as the First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance League.
The move by Secretary of State Colin Powell brings the US list of terrorist groups in line with one unveiled last week by the European Union that included organizations not already sanctioned by Washington.
"We have consistently said that the fight against terrorism requires international cooperation in the fullest measure," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said in a statement. "The secretary's decision supports the important step taken last week by our European partners."
There are fears that the US-led "coalition against terror" could be weakened by the tensions between Pakistan and India, which came to a head last month after Delhi accused Islamabad of sponsoring a suicide attack on its parliament.
Both countries have massed thousands of troops at their frontier, mainly in the disputed Kashmir region, and there has been cross-border shelling.
But Pakistan has launched a crack-down on the Kashmiri separatist groups held responsible for the latest attacks on Indian targets -- arresting at least 100 officials and activists -- easing tensions and winning US praise.
Tuesday January 1, 7:01 PM
KABUL (Reuters) - Anti-Taliban forces appeared on Tuesday to be zeroing in on Mullah Mohammad Omar, the movement's reclusive leader thought to be hiding in southern Afghanistan.
For an impoverished nation reeling from more than 20 years of war, a row over another U.S. air attack marked a bitter start to the New Year.
Afghans said U.S. planes killed more than 100 civilians in attacks on an eastern village on Sunday. A Reuters cameraman who went to Qalaye Niazi in Paktia district found pools of blood, scraps of flesh and clumps of human hair.
A U.S. military spokesman said the strikes by two B-1B bombers and a B-52 destroyed a compound used by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda fighters and their Taliban allies.
Navy Lieutenant-Commander Matthew Klee said two surface-to-air missiles were fired at the planes during the raid. "You don't have a village launching surface-to-air missiles at aircraft," he said. "You have a known al Qaeda-Taliban leadership compound."
America's CIA, together with Saudi Arabian and Pakistani intelligence services, operated a covert arms pipeline to Afghan mujahideen fighting Soviet occupation forces in the 1980s. The arms included Soviet-designed Sam-7 and U.S. Stinger shoulder-fired, anti-aircraft missiles.
Anti-Soviet fighters included many foreign Muslims, including Saudi-born millionaire bin Laden, chief suspect in the September 11 suicide attacks on New York and Washington.
This is the second time since the United States began its bombing offensive in Afghanistan on October 7 that it has apparently launched mistaken attacks on civilians.
In the first incident, witnesses said 60 civilians died when planes repeatedly attacked a convoy of tribal leaders heading to Kabul for the inauguration of the new interim government.
Most of the victims were reported to be women and children.
Local Afghan leaders and the country's interim defence minister, Mohammed Fahim, have called for an end to the U.S. bombing campaign blamed for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of Afghan civilians .
"The attacks must end. The Americans must stop bombing," Haji Saifullah, head of a local tribal council, told Reuters.
Saifullah said 107 civilians were killed in the latest raid.
None belonged either to the ousted Taliban or to bin Laden's al Qaeda network, he said, adding that the village was attacked because of what he called "wrong information" passed to U.S. forces by local rivals.
Defence Minister Fahim, urging an end to the bombing, said bin Laden had probably fled to Pakistan and his fighters had scattered.
But Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said he thought the world's most wanted man was probably still in Afghanistan.
Both bin Laden and Mullah Omar have so far escaped the huge U.S. led effort to topple the Taliban and root out al Qaeda. The one-eyed Omar is second only to bin Laden on the Americans' most wanted list.
U.S. officials say Omar might be hiding near Baghran, in southern Helmand district, about 100 miles (160 km) northwest of the Taliban's former stronghold of Kandahar.
The anti-Taliban intelligence chief in Kandahar said he had asked villagers in Helmand to hand Omar over.
"We have told them to give us Omar, but no ultimatum has been issued," Haji Gullalai told Reuters. "We have two goals: to disarm irresponsible people and to get Omar, who is a criminal for the Afghan people and the whole world."
He said he and tribal allies had assembled a force of up to 2,000 fighters and they were ready to try to capture the fugitive if he was not handed over.
The cleric who stamped his traditionalist version of Islam on Afghanistan fled Kandahar in December as his rule collapsed under the pressure of U.S. air strikes.
Mullah Omar is believed still to command widespread loyalty in southern, Pashtun-speaking areas of Afghanistan.
Zacarias Moussaoui, the first Qaeda suspect to be indicted on charges involving the September 11 attacks is due in a U.S. federal court in Alexandria, Virginia on Wednesday to enter a plea on charges of conspiring with bin Laden and others to murder thousands of people.
Around 3,300 people died in the September 11 attacks.
The United States said Pakistan had handed over 25 bin Laden fighters for questioning, taking the number in U.S. custody to 180.
In Kabul, the new Afghan administration and Britain initialled an agreement on deployment of about 4,500 foreign peacekeeping troops, known as the International Security Assistance Force.
A U.S. soldier was wounded in the leg on Monday when unidentified gunmen opened fire on a convoy of U.S. special forces troops outside the eastern town of Jalalabad, U.S. military officials said.
In Crawford, Texas, U.S. President George W. Bush said Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was curbing militants who sought to harm India.
"He's cracking down hard and I appreciate his efforts," Bush said. "Terror is terror and the fact that the Pakistani president is after the terrorists is a good sign."
Pakistan said on Monday it had detained a founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of two Kashmiri groups India blames for the December 13 suicide attack on its parliament. Fourteen people died.
Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh praised Islamabad's efforts as a step forward, his first positive comment towards Pakistan since the crisis erupted between the two nuclear-armed states.
Deal inked on Afghan force as more al-Qaeda detainees sent to US camp
Tuesday January 1, 4:09 PM AFP
A deal was reached on deploying foreign peacekeepers in Afghanistan, as scores of followers of master terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden will reportedly be taken from a Pakistani jail to a US prison camp in Afghanistan.
Controversy over US tactics in the hunt for bin Laden reached new heights amid reports a US bombing raid on an Afghan village killed at least 70 civilians, while Washington said it froze the assets of several European groups and placed them on its list of terrorist organizations.
Moves to bring stability to Afghanistan also coincided with growing regional tensions as Pakistan rounded up Islamic militants in an apparent bid to placate its neighbour India, amid fears of war between the rival nuclear powers.
About 150 arrested bin Laden followers will be shifted from a northern Pakistani jail in Kohat to a US prison camp in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar for more intensive interrogation, Islamabad's Dawn daily said Tuesday, quoting official sources.
The daily said the detained members of bin Laden's al-Qaeda network -- mostly from Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other unspecified Arabian peninsula countries -- would be flown to Kandahar in batches. Four at least would be moved to Islamabad for deportation.
US forces built a prison camp at Kandahar airport after Marines moved in to occupy the facility last month.
A US military spokesman said Monday that Washington was holding 180 prisoners from al-Qaeda or the former ruling Taliban militia which had sheltered bin Laden -- 164 are being held in Kandahar.
The al-Qaeda is accused of planning the September 11 suicide plane attacks on US targets that killed more than 3,000 people.
Villagers from Niazi Qala, 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of Gardez in Afghanistan's Paktia province, told AFP that on Sunday US planes bombarded the village and killed at least 70 people.
The Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) put the number of dead at 92 and quoted a witness as saying that no members of the al-Qaeda network of foreign Islamic fighters were there.
A US military spokesman acknowledged that some civilians could have died in the raid, but insisted the night-long bombardment had been necessary.
"It is well known to us that there were al-Qaeda/Taliban leadership (in the village). That is why we attacked the compound," said Major Bill Harrison. "We feel it was a legitimate military target."
News of the attack came just a day after Kabul's new interim government backed away from earlier calls for the bombing to be abandoned and gave the green light for further raids to flush out bin Laden and his supporters.
US President George W. Bush, speaking near his ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he is spending the holiday period, said efforts to catch bin Laden would be successful.
Bin Laden is on the run, he said, "and any time you get a person running, it means you're going to get him pretty soon... It's just a matter of time."
Citing unnamed military officials, ABC News reported the US armed forces had "circumstantial but compelling" evidence that bin Laden was alive and still in charge of his followers.
The report quoted one of the officials as saying the United States had intercepted communications originating in Iran, in which the caller said: "You should keep bin Laden (using a code name) off of the television.
"He looks bad, he looks sick, and it is demoralizing to his people," the caller added, according to the report.
A visibly worn bin Laden appeared in a video recording broadcast last week by Al-Jazeera satellite television, based in Qatar -- but the tape is believed to have been made between December 7 and 11.
Seventy British troops arrived in Kabul on Monday as Afghan Interior Minister Yunus Qanooni and British Major General John McColl, who is to lead the international force, finally signed the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
The multinational force will number between 3,000 and 4,000 troops to help provide security as the new government of interim leader Hamid Karzai tries to rebuild the nation after the ouster of the hard-line Taliban militia.
Britain will lead the force for the first three months of its six-month deployment in Afghanistan.
The European groups affected by the new US sanctions include five organizations from Northern Ireland: the Continuity IRA, the Loyalist Volunteer Force, the Orange Volunteers, the Red Hand Defenders and the Ulster Defense Association.
Also affected was Grapo, a group from Spain also known as the First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance League.
The move by Secretary of State Colin Powell brings the US list of terrorist groups in line with one unveiled last week by the European Union that included organizations not already sanctioned by Washington.
"We have consistently said that the fight against terrorism requires international cooperation in the fullest measure," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said in a statement. "The secretary's decision supports the important step taken last week by our European partners."
As Washington announced new antiterrorism measures, new evidence emerged that bin Laden and his al-Qaeda followers were working to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday it had acquired two computers used for years in Kabul by top members of the al-Qaeda network.
It said the files on their hard drives included outlines of the network's efforts to develop chemical or biological weapons and a video file of bin Laden mentioning the September 11 attacks.
Tuesday January 1, 1:28 PM AFP
Asian nations ushered in 2002 amid the dawn of a new era in Afghanistan and a ray of hope that nuclear rivals India and Pakistan may be pulling back from the brink of war.
Despite no sign of a let-up in the economic gloom and bloody unrest which plagued much of the region last year, there was an air of anticipation that the next 12 months could mark a turning point for some nations.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee led the way stressing that the world's second most populous nation did not want to go to war with neighbour Pakistan.
Tensions between the South Asian nations reached their lowest ebb in three decades in 2001, and again fuelled fears of a dangerous conflict between the newly nuclear nations.
"Shed your anti-India mentality and take effective steps to stop cross-border terrorism, and you will find India willing to walk more than half the distance to work closely with Pakistan to resolve, through dialogue, any issue, including the contentious issue of Jammu and Kashmir," Vajpayee said Tuesday in a New Year article.
"Our efforts will be further intensified, if Pakistan demonstrates its matching sincerity to have peace with India," Vajpayee said, adding that both countries should fight together against their common enemies of poverty, illiteracy, disease and unemployment.
"This is the challenge of the New Year and of the new century. Let us accept it in a spirit of cooperation."
New Delhi has welcomed the arrests by Pakistan of dozens of militants from two groups blamed by India for attacking the Indian parliament in the first positive sign since the December 13 assault.
But for thousands of families separated by the division of the sub-continent, Tuesday was marked by sadness as a tit-for-tat ban on India and Pakistan using the other's airspace came into effect.
The snapping of the air links, which followed an end to bus links on Friday, means those families divided since 1947 will now be forced to make huge and costly detours to be reunited.
New Year was not being marked by the Afghan people who have turned a tumultuous page in their history with the ousting in past weeks of the Taliban hardline militia who ruled their country for five oppressive years.
Under the Islamic calendar Afghanistan will celebrate the new year on March 21 -- a date also being considered for the return of former king Zahar Shah, who has been in exile since being deposed in July 1973.
But most foreign organisations were holding discreet celebrations in Kabul, battered by 23 years of war.
"We know some people would be shocked by the fact that we are drinking and having a good time in a city in ruins," said one official.
"It's easy to criticise. But we work hard and we also deserve to celebrate a day like this."
Despite the start of a new year, it seemed elsewhere that old conflicts continued to fester.
Four churches in the town of Palu, in the eastern Indonesian island chain of Sulawesi, were rocked by bomb blasts over the New Year leaving two policemen injured, the state news agency Antara reported.
Palu has been gripped by renewed sectarian tensions since November when militant Muslim fighters attacked Christian villages, killing at least nine people and sending thousands fleeing.
And as US stock markets finished their second year of consecutive losses amid the global economic slowdown, many were thinking of the hard times ahead.
Japan's Emperor Akihito, only a month after the long-awaited birth of the first child of his son Crown Prince Naruhito, said in a New Year's statement: "Today Japan is faced with various difficult problems, but remembering that the wisdom and efforts of the people overcame the postwar hardships, I am confident the people will surmount these difficulties."
Hong Kong's Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa echoed his words, saying: "We should not underestimate the economic difficulties before us, nor should we dismiss the strengths of Hong Kong."
For many though, the partying to see in 2002 just got way out of hand. In the Philippines one person died and more than 500 were injured in traditional raucous revelry, while in Thailand the holiday death toll rose to almost 400.
Tuesday January 1, 9:35 AM
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush on Monday named Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, a top-ranking Muslim in the U.S. government, as a special envoy to help Afghanistan recover from the ravages of Taliban rule.
The White House said Bush had appointed the National Security Council official to serve as his "special presidential envoy" to assist Afghanistan as it rebuilt after five years of harsh rule by the fundamentalist Taliban movement.
The United States drove the Taliban from power earlier this year as part of its "war on terrorism" to destroy the al Qaeda network run by Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
"The special envoy is a representative to the Afghan people as they seek to consolidate a new order, reconstruct their country and free it from al Qaeda and Taliban control," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said in a statement.
"The position ... was established to underscore the president's support for these objectives," he added.
Born in Mazar-e-Sharif, site of the first major victory in the U.S.-led war on terrorism in Afghanistan, Khalilzad is widely viewed as one of the U.S. government's most experienced and subtle analysts of Afghan affairs.
SERVED UNDER REAGAN, GEORGE BUSH
A veteran U.S. official who served under former U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Khalilzad will keep his post as special assistant to the president for Southwest Asia, the Near East and North Africa.
His appointment ensures that Afghanistan will get a hearing at the White House and across the U.S. government, given his ties to the last three Republican administrations, where he has earned high regard for his expertise on Afghanistan and U.S. military and diplomatic strategy.
He is expected to work closely with Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. special representative for Afghanistan, who is in charge of overseeing the central Asian nation's transition to a new government after the Taliban's defeat.
Khalilzad is the third U.S. official with special duties related to Afghanistan, joining Richard Haass, the special coordinator for Afghanistan policy, and James Dobbins, the special representative to the Afghan opposition, which is now part of the coalition interim government put in place on Dec. 22.
From 1985 to 1989, Khalilzad served as a senior State Department official advising on the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the Iran-Iraq war, and from 1991 to 1992, he was a senior Defense Department official for policy planning.
Khalilzad has excellent contacts at the Pentagon, having served as a counsellor to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and long ties to the conservative defence establishment. The latter date to his work with strategic thinker Albert Wohlstetter at the University of Chicago, where he received his doctorate.
Tuesday January 1, 10:04 PM AFP
Bringing to an end a year that will inevitably be remembered in the history books for the September 11 terror attacks, 2002 began in crisis and in hope around the globe.
India and Pakistan remained near the edge of war, the United States kept up its so-far fruitless search for Osama bin Laden, and Europe took a historic step toward unity with the launch of the new euro currency.
Half a million defiant New Yorkers, determined to show the terrorist attacks which killed some 3,000 people had not vanquished their city's spirit, packed Times Square to ring in the new year with optimism and revelry.
"I'm just so proud of all these people," said outgoing mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who became a folk-hero for his handling of the city after the attacks which levelled the World Trade Center.
"I'm proud of the way they've come back so strong," he said.
Speaking from his Texas ranch, US President George W. Bush vowed: "2002 is going to be a great year for America."
He insisted bin Laden would be brought to justice as US forces and their Afghan allies kept up their hunt for the world's most wanted man.
"He's running," Bush said. "And any time you get a person running, it means you're going to get him pretty soon."
But inside Afghanistan, the United States was facing fresh accusations that it had killed innocent civilians in a bombing raid said to have left more than 90 people dead.
Asia ushered in 2002 holding on to hopes that nuclear powers and longtime rivals India and Pakistan may be pulling back from the brink of war over the disputed Kashmir region.
Fighting continued, with Indian forces shelling Pakistan-controlled parts of Kashmir in an attack Indian officials said killed 10 enemy troops, though Pakistan denied any losses.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee stressed that the world's second most populous nation did not want to go to war with its neighbour.
In the troubled Middle East, there was a new sign of hope as officials announced the US special envoy would return to the region in another bid to forge a long elusive peace between the Palestinians and Israel.
In Europe, New Year's bells marked the birth of euro cash, a new language of commerce and unity for more than 300 million people, and the death knell for national currencies across 12 countries.
At the stroke of midnight, euro coins and notes began circulating from Finland to Greece and Germany to Portugal in a bold but risky move aimed at drawing Europe closer together economically and politically.
The biggest currency changeover in history was marked by fireworks shows and partying across the continent, though many regretted the loss of their long-cherished national monies.
Elsewhere in the world the economic outlook was far from certain as the new year dawned.
Argentina was plunged into its worst crisis in decades after losing two presidents in as many weeks to popular unrest over a moribund economy and rough-and-tumble politics.
Argentinians queued up once again at the banks, overwhelmed last week by depositors trying to extract what cash they could.
In Buenos Aires, politicians sought a consensus candidate to replace Adolfo Rodriguez Saa, who resigned as president Sunday just one week after being named to lead the nation to elections in March.
In Japan, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi vowed to fight record-high unemployment but Japanese newspaper editorials urged him to act out his slogan of reform to pull the nation out of its third recession in a decade.
Elsewhere in Asia, despite no sign of an imminent end to the economic gloom and bloody unrest which rattled many countries last year, there was a sense of renewed hope for the coming 12 months.
Taiwan, which formally became the 144th member of the World Trade Organisation on Tuesday, pledged to promote better ties with arch-rival China.
"We will not only fulfill our obligations as a member of the global community, but also view future cross-strait relations from a perspective of cooperation," President Chen Shui-bian said in a message.
There was also more violence at the beginning of 2002.
Four churches in Palu, a town in the eastern Indonesian island chain of Sulawesi which has been gripped by sectarian tensions, were rocked by bomb blasts that left three people policemen injured. A man in Jakarta was killed in a grenade blast.
Meanwhile in Australia, weary firefighters now in their second week of desperate battle against bushfires encircling Sydney were back on the job as new blazes broke out.
Violence marked the arrival of the new year in Johannesburg, where South African police and soldiers in armoured cars were met by a hail of stones, bottles, even furniture thrown from buildings in the Hillbrow district, notorious for New Year's Eve unrest.
In neighbouring Zambia, counting continued painstakingly slowly after the December 27 elections, with the tally so far showing the ruling party presidential candidate, Levy Mwanawasa, with a slim lead over his main rival, Anderson Mazoka.
But thousands marched on the Supreme Court in the Zambian capital Lusaka to protest at alleged vote rigging in the polls.
In the Central African Republic, shaken in 2001 by attempted coups and alleged plots to oust President Ange Felix Patasse, more than five people were wounded after soldiers fired in the air for more than an hour to celebrate the passage to a new year.
Authorities in Nigeria, meanwhile, ushered in 2002 by hiking the prices of petroleum products by between 15 and 27 percent in what officials called a move to liberalise the sector.
Tuesday January 1, 8:59 PM
KABUL (Reuters) - The United Nations began immunising nine million Afghan children against measles on Tuesday in a project it hopes will prevent 35,000 deaths from the disease each year in the war-torn country.
Thousands of mothers queued up with their children at some 200 vaccination centres at mosques and hospitals around the capital in the first stage of the project that will cover the whole nation by March, U.N. officials said.
"Measles is the number one killer among vaccine-preventable diseases in Afghanistan," said Baba Danbappa, head of the survival section of the U.N. children's agency UNICEF in Afghanistan. "By doing this, we are going to save about 35,000 children every year.
"We had restrictions before -- we couldn't go to certain areas because of the frontlines," he said of a land where peace is being restored after a U.S.-led coalition crushed the Taliban government in November, halting years of civil war.
"With only 40 percent coverage, we couldn't prevent outbreaks and were not reaching the number of children we should have."
At the immunisation centre of the Khair Khana 52-bed hospital on the edge of Kabul, Latifa vaccinated about 380 children on Tuesday morning alone, compared with an average 130-180 people per day before the launch of the project.
"The problem before was that the syringes we used became infected very easily," said Latifa, 39, who has been a vaccinator for 13 years. "Now we have all the equipment and vaccine we need."
One mother who brought her four children for vaccination said she decided to come to the centre after her neighbour's four-year-old son died of measles and then his elder brother contracted the disease.
"If he had been vaccinated, that boy might not have died," said Fauzai, 24, comforting her bawling seven-month daughter after her injection.
"Measles is spreading very fast in this region so I came as soon as I heard about the project on the radio."
The $8.2 million project -- widely advertised on Afghan radio and television -- aims to vaccinate 1.2 million children between six months and 12 years old in Kabul before expanding to the rest of the nation, said Danbappa.
Vaccine-preventable diseases claim some 1.7 million lives every year, of which 45.5 percent are due to measles, U.N. officials say
Afghan commander: Lag let bin Laden escape
By Steven Komarow, USA TODAY
HERAT, Afghanistan — Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants would be dead or in custody if Northern Alliance fighters had continued to pursue the terrorist leader, one of this country's top commanders and regional powerbrokers claimed Sunday. Instead, said Ismail Khan, governor of Herat province and one of Afghanistan's most successful militia leaders, his troops and other Northern Alliance fighters held back at the request of the West.
The fighters did not push south of Herat and Kabul after taking those cities in mid-November and attack Kandahar, then the stronghold of the Taliban rulers who had given bin Laden safe haven.
Allies, including the United States, wanted Northern Alliance forces to give way to fighters commanded by ethnic Pashtun leaders from southern Afghanistan. In the delicate balancing act that is Afghan politics, allies feared that giving Northern Alliance forces too much territory might only lead to renewed factional battling later on.
Khan maintained, however, that "we could have captured all the Taliban and the al-Qaeda groups. We could have arrested Osama bin Laden with all of his supporters." That claim, aired during an interview with a small group of Western reporters, marked his strongest criticism yet of the Western- backed effort that led to the Taliban's toppling and installation of a interim government in Afghanistan earlier this month.
Bin Laden's whereabouts are a mystery. Khan said the Saudi terrorist is probably still in Afghanistan. "Osama bin Laden has to be in Afghanistan because (Taliban leader) Mullah Omar is here. He doesn't have any place else to go."
One possible hideout, some Afghan officials have said, is in the mountains northwest of Kandahar. Khan's forces, driving southeast from Herat toward Kandahar, might have reached that area if the U.S.-backed war had continued unabated. Instead, he said, the ethnic Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance was pressured to hold back and let anti-Taliban ethnic Pashtuns win the day there.
Pashtuns, who make up about 40% of the population, are Afghanistan's dominant ethnic group. Most Taliban members are Pashtun. A Pashtun, Hamid Karzai, heads the six-month interim administration.
If Northern Alliance troops had been allowed to push on and then hand over prisoners to Pashtun fighters, Khan said, time and momentum would not have been lost. Three weeks elapsed between the fall of Herat and Kabul and the fall of Kandahar. Now, he said, Afghanistan is saddled with "many Talib Afghans, the al-Qaeda group. And it might be dangerous for the future of Afghanistan."
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