Monday, August 24,1998
The University Daily Kansan
Section A·Page 9
United States denies aiming at bin Laden
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — If Saudi-born extremist Osama bin Laden were killed in further American action against his terror network, the United States would have no regrets about his death. Secretary of Defense William Cohen said Sunday.
He said no one would weep over the death of someone who was fanatical about killing innocent human beings.
"If he has declared war against the United States, which he has, and if he is part of the command and control of that terror network, then if he is in the line of fire as such, that's his problem," Cohen said.
An executive order prohibiting assassinations has been in effect since the Ford administration, and Clinton administration officials have stressed that they were not targeting bin Laden in missile attacks Aug. 20 on terrorist camps in Afghanistan. In a simultaneous attack, ship-fired U.S. cruise missiles targeted a drug-manufacturing factory in Sudan, accused by the United States of helping make chemical weapons.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said that the attacks were aimed not at bin Laden but at his command and control facilities and generally against those who were involved in this.
Nevertheless, officials have said that the United States has entered a new phase of aggressive counterterrorism in which would-be terrorists will be pursued.
"What bin Laden did was an act of war," said Sen, Arlen Specter. "When you are at war, it's not assassination." Bin Laden's group has been blamed for bombings at the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 257 people.
Specter, who last week asked whether the missile attacks were a means to deflect attention from Clinton's personal problems over the Monica Lewinsky affair, joined other Republicans Sunday in praising the administration for its swift action.
The intelligence community did a very good job leading up to the strikes last Thursday." Specter said.
"I think the president did exactly the right thing," said Rep. Porter Goss.
The House Intelligence Committee chairman agreed.
He said that he had been informed throughout the planning process and that his only criticism was that the factory in Sudan suspected of producing chemicals for nerve gas wasn't bombed months ago.
Defense Secretary Cohen said planning for the missile strike began 10 days before it was executed, and Clinton approved it a week before.
Sandy Berger, the White House national security adviser, said that all Clinton's advisers on security, including the secretaries of defense and state,
the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and he, recommended the operation.
"The intelligence came together very quickly," he said. "We saw we had a target of opportunity."
Newsweek, in its edition on newsstands today, said the operation, codenamed "Infinite Reach," was so secret that even people in Cohen's office weren't informed. The article said one factor cementing the decision to move ahead with the attack was an intercepted mobile-phone conversation between two of bin Laden's lieutenants that clearly implicated them in the embassy bombings.
"We had very reliable information that the embassy bombings might be only the first two of three and possibly four attacks," said Gen. Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "In a matter of days it became evident that bin Laden's organization was responsible. That's what drove the attack."
Albanian entering U.S. embassy killed
The Associated Press
TIRANA, Albania — Security guards at the U.S. Embassy in Tirana shot and killed an Albanian policeman who scaled the wall of the U.S. diplomatic compound yesterday, the Interior Ministry said.
The motive of the break-in was not immediately known. But U.S. officials indicated the shooting appeared unrelated to recent reports of a possible terrorist attack against the embassy in Albania.
"We have reason to believe that this was an isolated incident of a particular person, although we are concerned about threats at all our embassies, and Tirana is clearly one of them," Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said.
The snooching came a week after 120 heavily armed Marines tightened security at the American diplomatic compound in Tirana after U.S. officials said they received credible evidence of a plan to attack the embassy.
Friday, police and intelligence
agents reportedly raided several alleged terrorist safe houses and arrested 10 foreign nationals, including some from Arab countries.
The Interior Ministry, in an official statement, said the policeman climbed the 7-foot rear wall of the embassy at about 11:45 a.m. Albanian police outside the embassy started shooting in the air to force him out, and after he fired back with a pistol, security officers shot him.
A ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, identified the guards who shot the intruder as American, not Albanian.
The policeman had at least two bullet wounds, one near the heart, and died soon afterward in surgery at a nearby military hospital, doctors said.
He was identified as Shkelqim Shehu, 35, from the village of Ndroq, 10 miles west of Tirana. He was a member of a police unit in charge of security at Tirana bank.
Relatives in Ndroq said that Shehu had an extremely poor family and was depressed. Saturday night, they said, he told his mother he would not live to see age 40.
No anti-American feelings were evident among relatives or family members.
Albanian police surrounded the embassy immediately after the shooting and sealed off surrounding roads, and U.S. Marines fortified the compound.
Security at the embassy has been stepped up in recently after the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and again after retaliatory U.S. missile attacks on alleged terrorist sites in Sudan and Afghanistan. An evacuation of embassy staffers continued yesterday, but the Americans said it was planned and had nothing to do with the shooting.
Missile strike rallies Pakistani extremists
The Associated Press
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistani Habib ur Rehman went to neighboring Afghanistan to live under what he calls an exemplary Islamic government.
He was back in his homeland yesterday for treatment of wounds received in the U.S. attack on a suspected terrorist-training complex in Afghanistan, and he appeared even more committed to extremist Islam.
The attack has rallied hard-line Islamic groups in Pakistan. In the otherwise moderate Muslim country, they are gaining strength from the like-minded Taliban, who control most of Afghanistan.
"The Taliban government is an exemplary Islamic government," Rehman said. "That's why I went there—to live under them and see how they organize things."
The attack has prompted daily anti-American protests around Pakistan, and the city of Peshawar has had the largest and most-violent demonstrations.
In the northern city of Saidu Sharif, several groups met to call for a jihad, or holy war, against the United States.
"The Taliban have brought peace to Afghanistan," said Mohamed Ibrahim, head of the Peshawar office of Jamaat-i-Islami, a small but growing political party. "They are determined to enforce sharia (Islamic) law on Afghanistan."
In Pakistan, years of economic mismanagement and corruption have made Islamic parties' promises of order attractive.
"Our goal is the establishment of an Islamic state in Pakistan," Ibrahim said.
Yeltsin removes prime minister, fires government
The Associated Press
MOSCOW — Boris Yeltsin fired Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko and the rest of his government yesterday and said he was reappointing former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.
The surprise announcement came as Kiriyenko and the government were strug-
going to overcome one of Russia's worst economic crises since the Soviet collapse.
The Russian president had fired Chernomyrdin and appointed the 35-year-old Kiriyenko in March, saying Russia needed new ideas and fresh leadership. Kiriyenko had barely been approved by parliament when Russia's economy went into a tailspin because of plunging world oil prices and the Asian economic crisis.
Yeltsin: Firings aimed at restructuring government.
Since then, the young prime minister had been waging a losing battle to shore up the economy, defend the national currency and push reform measures through a hostile parliament dominated by communists and their allies.
Chernomyrdin, a Soviet-style bureaucrat who once headed the national gas monopoly, Gazprom, has been laying the groundwork for a presidential campaign in 2000 since his firing.
Few political analysts think Chernomyrdyn — a relatively bland and conservative figure strongly associated with an unpopular administration — could win, although he probably could count on some support from the business and banking establishment.
Kiriyenko had been holding meetings yesterday to work out measures to save Russia's banking system from default.
Yeltsin delivered the news in a terse announcement from his press service. He did not give any reason for the shift, but he has been under increasing pressure from parliament to replace the government.
The lower house of parliament, the State Duma, called Friday for Yeltsin's resignation, and all factions in parliament also had demanded that Kiriyenko step down or be fired.
"We can't afford the luxury of being a popular government," Kiriyenko said.
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