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Afghans Plead for Cash, U.S. Presses Campaign
Saturday, January 12, 2002
(8:25 PM ET)
By Saul Hudson & Tom Heneghan
Reuters

While bin Laden's whereabouts were unknown, another American foe, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, was in U.S. sights.

WASHINGTON, DC / KABUL, Pakistan -- Reuters
With the Kabul government pleading for $45 billion to resurrect its devastated land, the United States looked beyond Afghanistan in its war on terrorism but still pressed its withering destruction of remnant militant hide-outs inside the country.

As the U.S. military hunted al Qaeda head Osama bin Laden and ousted Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, a top diplomat said on Saturday the world's superpower held the option of opening a new front -- against long-standing enemy Iraq.

Afghanistan said the cash-starved country, shattered by 23 years of wars, needed to open schools, improve food supplies and reestablish healthcare and would make its higher-than-expected request at a donors' conference in Tokyo this month.

And oceans away, the first 20 captives shipped out of the war theater, settled into a routine, sleeping and praying in their outdoor, cage-like cells at a U.S. Navy base leased on Cuba as they waited for interrogation and possible trial.

The British Foreign Ministry said a Briton was among the 20 captives, who were transported to Cuba on Friday after being identified as the most dangerous of the more than 400 prisoners held by U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Cuba -- far from protesting against the U.S. decision to use the isolated outpost -- offered to fumigate against disease-carrying mosquitoes in the cactus-strewn, mined area around the camp at one of the world's last Cold War frontiers.

The detainees were captured in a U.S.-led military campaign which swept from power the Taliban rulers in retribution for harboring bin Laden -- the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks on America that killed more than 3,000 people.
(More: iWon.com News Source)
2002 © Reuters, Ltd.

Dan