NATO denies plan to strike Afghanistan

BRUSSELS, SEPT. 13. NATO flatly denied a British newspaper report today that it was drawing up emergency plans for a possible massive strike on Afghanistan following Tuesday's devastating attacks on the United States. ``We totally deny this,'' a NATO spokesman said of a report in The Guardian that military planners were preparing contingency plans for an assault involving tens of thousands of ground troops on fugitive guerilla chieftain Osama Bin Laden's Afghan base.

U.S. officials and Western intelligence agencies say Osama is the Number One suspect in the synchronised suicide attacks by four hijacked aircraft on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, in which thousands of Americans are feared to have died.

NATO's policy-making council invoked a Cold War-era mutual defence pledge for the first time yesterday, declaring that the attack on the U.S. was an attack on all allies and could draw a collective military response. But the NATO spokesman said the Council had not issued any instructions to military planners to prepare any action, and it would first be up to the U.S. to tell NATO whether it had proof that the attacks had been launched from abroad and request assistance from the allies.

``The council made a political statement, not an operational decision. There hasn't been one second to give any instructions to the military authorities so far. That would only come later,'' a NATO diplomat said. Officials said no further NATO council meeting was planned this week unless an emergency session were requested by one of the allies.

The Guardian said Afghanistan's ruling Taliban would come under intense pressure from Washington to hand over Osama who is blamed for a string of deadly bombings on U.S. targets, ``or face the consequences''. It quoted NATO defence sources as saying an allied taskforce could take weeks to assemble.

- Reuters

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Section  : International
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