RESCUERS CHANT "USA-USA" - As Bush declares national emergency

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Friday, 14 September 2001 17:26 (ET)

Rescuers chant "USA-USA;" as Bush declares national emergency By MARTIN WALKER

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 (UPI) - Chanting "USA - USA", exhausted police, rescue workers and firefighters found new energy to stomp their feet and flourish flags amid the ruins of New York's World Trade Center on Friday and hailed President George W. Bush as the symbol of an America that would revive, recover and retaliate for the terrorist wounds gouged into its heart.

"Thank you for your hard work - thank you for making America proud," Bush told them, in a moment when his presidency struck a chord of moral unity and resolve with an outraged and grieving nation.

Earlier Friday, Bush formally declared a national state of emergency, citing the threat of further attacks, and approved the activation of up to 50,000 military reservists as the U.S. Senate authorized him to use all necessary force against those responsible for the deadly terror attacks that sent hijacked civilian airliners hurtling into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. A fourth hijacked airliner crashed in Pennsylvania.

"Our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil," Bush said at a service of mourning at Washington's National Cathedral.

"War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder. This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others. It will end in a way, and at an hour, of our choosing," he said.

"To the children and parents and spouses and families and friends of the lost, we offer the deepest sympathy of the nation," Bush said. "And I assure you, you are not alone." The president called for noontime memorial services, ringing of bells, and evening candlelight vigils. He also invited people in other countries to join the United States in its collective grief.

He said "our national character" had been shown by rescuers who worked past exhaustion and in "eloquent acts of sacrifice" by people who helped each other escape the smoky burning buildings. But Bush also said the country would deal severely with those responsible for the attacks.

The Senate Friday approved a resolution authorizing "the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States." The House was expected to pass the resolution later in the day.

Both houses approved $40 billion to respond to Tuesday's attacks, half for rescue and rebuilding efforts in New York and at the Pentagon, and half for the pursuit and destruction of the hijackers, their networks and their sponsors.

The president also signed an order to call up to 50,000 military reservists to active duty, the first such activation since the Gulf War mobilization led by his father, President George H.W. Bush, in 1991.

At the same time, Secretary of State Colin Powell publicly warned Afghanistan's governing Taliban movement that their country was in immediate danger of America's vengeance.

"To the extent that you are providing haven, support, encouragement and other resources to organizations such as the organization headed by Osama Bin Laden . . . you need to understand you cannot separate your activities from the activity of the perpetrators," Powell said at a State Department briefing.

Powell then cautioned that the U.S. government had yet to make a formal determination that the Afghan-based Islamic terrorist mastermind bin Laden was to blame for Tuesday's attacks on the Pentagon and on New York's World Trade center.

"We have not yet identified Osama Bin Laden as the direct perpetrator," Powell said.

"To the children and parents and spouses and families and friends of the lost, we offer the deepest sympathy of the nation," Bush said. "And I assure you, you are not alone."

Meanwhile, FBI officials in New Delhi secured from the Indian government documents and intelligence on bin Laden's operations in the region, including video film and the names and addresses of known militants, and on the Taliban and its training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

India's Director of the Intelligence Bureau K P Singh and the head of its research and analysis wing Vikram Sood met FBI investigators to hand over the intelligence, under India's pledge of full cooperation with the U.S. hunt for the terrorists.

But in Europe, some conditions emerged to blur the unprecedented decision Wednesday by NATO to invoke Article V of the NATO Treaty and treat the attack on the United States as an attack on all the allies. Officials in Paris and Berlin, and Tony Blair's official spokesman in London, all said that this commitment was "not a blank check" of unconditional support for any American response.

NATO sources also told UPI Friday that during the North Atlantic Council meeting in Brussels Wednesday, representatives of Germany, Belgium and Holland had all questioned the invocation of Article V, fearing an American over-reaction in which they would be complicit. NATO finally agreed to give the Article V commitment when British and French delegates argued strongly for it, noting that the NATO commitment could also constrain the U.S. retaliation by requiring consultation with NATO allies.

Afghanistan was bracing Friday for American attacks, Taliban officials told UPI.

"We fear the Americans will go for the offensive without determining whether Osama bin Laden was behind Tuesday's attacks or not," a spokesman for supreme Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar told UPI from Kabul in a telephone interview. "We are, nonetheless, ready for a U.S. offensive."

Despite tremendous international pressure, including United Nations sanctions, Taliban rulers have refused to expel bin Laden. But diplomatic sources told UPI that Pakistan was now trying to persuade the Taliban to surrender bin Laden for trial before an Islamic court, possibly in Saudi Arabia, but few Muslim countries are expected to relish such a prospect.

Although the U.S. armed forces were on high alert, and two aircraft carriers were reported cruising near the Persian Gulf within striking distance of Afghanistan, a senior White House official warned against any rush to judgment, or any expectation of a swift U.S, response.

"This is a long struggle, not a short one," the senior official told reporters in a background briefing. "If it takes multi-year, we'll devote multi-year. And I think it's probably a good thing to think that it probably will."

The international cooperation effort gathered pace, with Egypt's President Honsi Mubarak calling for an special conference of world leaders: "to adopt a decisive and lasting international stand against terrorism, which threatened and targets international peace and the security of (every citizen)."

Interpol, the global police cooperation bureau based in Lyon, France, has established a September 11 Task Force to coordinate all international police intelligence on the terrorist attacks, secretary-general Ron Noble, formerly of London's Scotland Yard, said Friday. Interpol plans to expand its existing data base on global terror networks with the latest passport and travel, telephone and credit card records used by known terrorist suspects.

British, French, German, Italian, Israeli and Russian intelligence services, who have been offering full cooperation with their American counterparts, have all conveyed to Washington their belief that bin Laden's network, known as al Qaida, is the prime suspect in the attacks, diplomatic sources told UPI.

"The way it was carried out, the choice of targets, the military approach, the highly professional preparation and the presumably large resources" were all reasons pointing to bin Laden, Frank-Walter Steinmayer, chief of staff to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, told reporters in Berlin.

In a statement distributed Friday by his spokesman in Islamabad, Pakistan, Omar said bin Laden was not involved in Tuesday's attacks.

Urging Washington to provide whatever evidence it had against bin Laden, Omar said: "We have no planes, no pilots in Afghanistan. It is not possible for Osama bin Laden to carry out such an attack from Afghanistan. He has no fax, no telephone, no computers."

Describing bin Laden as "a victim of his own reputation," the Taliban leader asked the United States to "catch those responsible for the attacks."

Taliban officials said they expected the U.S. attack to be far more extensive than the limited cruise missiles strikes launched after the 1998 bombings in East Africa. They said that the last time the Americans only targeted bin Laden's bases but this time they believed they would try to destroy Taliban's infrastructure.

Pakistan is now under intense American pressure to use its influence with the Taliban to force bin Laden's extradition. The Pakistan government was handed Thursday a list of U.S. "requests" for cooperation, which seemed close to demands. Pakistan was asked to seal its borders with Afghanistan, suspend all fuel deliveries and open its airspace to possible U.S. military strikes, diplomatic sources told UPI.

Meanwhile in New York, Mayor Rudolf Giuliani told rescue workers Friday there was still hope of finding survivors in the rubble. New York's airports were re-opening cautiously, after alarms on Thursday evening when five men were briefly detained and questioned, in one case after armed police stormed an aircraft, provoking some press reports that two more "terrorist hit teams" had been identified and stopped.

The FBI on Friday said no one was arrested in New York Thursday in the investigation of Tuesday's terror attacks, despite the morning newspaper headlines, which said armed individuals had been taken into custody. A spokesman said, "We investigated the situation thoroughly, and it was resolved to our satisfaction."

On Tuesday, two commandeered planes were flown into the 110-story towers of the World Trade Center, a second hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon, and a third crashed in rural Western Pennsylvania. A total of 266 people on the planes died in the crashes. New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said Thursday 4,763 people were listed as missing at the World Trade Center. At the Pentagon, 126 were feared dead.

The FBI on Friday released the names of 19 people who it said were the hijackers.

The flight data recorder was recovered from the crater formed when the airplane crashed in Pennsylvania, and the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder were recovered from the wreckage at Pentagon. The data devices from the New York crashes had not yet been found.

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2001


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