Time running out for Taliban: Blair

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, OCT. 2. Even as Washington continued to tread cautiously, there was feverish speculation here that military action against Afghanistan was imminent after the British Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair, said today that the deadline for the Taliban Government to hand over Osama bin Laden, wanted for his role in the September 11 attacks in the U.S., was fast approaching and it should now brace itself for the consequences.

In his most explicit remarks yet, widely interpreted as a declaration of ``war,'' he said that ``no compromise,'' ``no diplomacy'' or ``meeting of minds'' was possible with an undemocratic and barbaric regime and the choice was stark: ``Defeat or be defeated; and defeat we must.'' The option before the Taliban Government, he warned, was to surrender Osama or surrender power. Declaring that action to ``eliminate'' the Taliban hardware and cut off its sources of money and support was inevitable, he insisted that ``we are not over-reacting.'' The proposed action was not borne out of a sense of revenge but was intended to bring to justice those responsible for the savagery of September 11.

Mr. Blair, who was speaking at the Labour Party's annual conference in Brighton, said the offensive would be proportionate and ``targeted'' and whatever was ``humanly possible'' would be done to avoid civilian casualties. He was at pains to stress that it was not a fight against Islam, and said Osama by his action had done as much damage to the tenets of Islam as the Crusaders had done to Christianity. At the same time, he called upon both the Islamic world and the West to try and understand each other better.

Although Mr. Blair has been warning the Taliban almost on a daily basis, observers noted that his tone today was far more ``stark'' and assumed significance in the context of his statement two days ago that he had seen ``powerful and incontrovertible'' evidence of Osama's involvement in the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

The funds trail

A UNI report from Islamabad, quoting a claim by the CNN, said Pakistan's involvement in the September 11 attacks had surfaced after it was found that the Egyptian hijacker, Mohammad Atta, received $100,000 through a wire in the past year from the country.

The News, quoting the CNN sources, said today that it was known at this stage exactly where the funds may have originated.

The TV channel claimed that the wire transfers from Pakistan were sent to Atta through two banks in Florida. Atta allegedly then obtained money orders - a few thousand dollars at a time - to distribute to others involved in the plot in the months before the hijackings.

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