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CNN Live At Daybreak
Senators Visit Afghanistan As Military Bomb Terrorist Sites
Aired January 08, 2002 - 05:01 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: It is believed to be the first official U.S. Congressional delegation ever to visit Afghanistan and the senators on the trip are pledging ongoing support to help rebuild that nation.
CNN's Tom Mintier is in Islamabad, Pakistan with more on the Senate tour -- Tom.
TOM MINTIER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The Senate tour will be coming here to Islamabad and the agenda may be a little different than it was in Afghanistan. Here, they may have to deal with the current tense situation between India and Pakistan.
That was on the agenda yesterday as British Prime Minister Tony Blair came in for about eight or nine hours. He did hold meetings with some of the political parties but the highlight was his 90 minute meeting with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
Now, this was seen as important because he just came from a meeting with the Indian prime minister before coming here and there might have been a message to be passed across the table about starting some kind of a dialogue, something Mr. Blair says must happen.
But as expected, President Musharraf did come out and issued so far his toughest announcement on the war against terrorism.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF, PAKISTAN: Pakistan rejects terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and has fully cooperated with the international coalition against terrorism in that spirit.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MINTIER: I say the toughest because it did not have the usual caveat that indigenous people of Kashmir have the right to self- determination and that is not terrorism, but freedom fighters. It was something that was left off that part of the speech.
Now, it'll be interesting, in the next 24 to 48 hours the Pakistani president will address the people of Pakistan and most Western observers are expecting this to be a very important speech. As one Western diplomat told me here, this may be the speech of his life, basically outlining his position and his government's stand on extremism and militantism and how to deal with it inside of Pakistan.
As we said at the beginning, the U.S. delegation of senators finished their tour of Afghanistan late last night with the meeting at Bagrham. Now they are coming to Pakistan and will meet the Pakistani president later on today. We will also hear from them later this afternoon. They've scheduled a news conference here in Islamabad to talk about their trip to Afghanistan and possibly more importantly about their efforts to move dialogue to the front burner here in Pakistan between Pakistan and India -- Carol, back to you.
COSTELLO: Tom, I can only imagine the security around the senators. It must be intense.
MINTIER: Well, nothing like what was around Tony Blair yesterday. The security here at the hotel, to give you an indication, he was having lunch behind me about six floors down around the swimming pool. I leaned over to take a look and there was an Islamabad police officer with an automatic weapon who yelled down to me to get away from the edge of the hotel.
So the security around Mr. Blair was, indeed, high. Security is always high here, but it's extremely high now that the tensions exist and so many dignitaries are coming through town in an effort to start the diplomacy back on track again.
COSTELLO: Going back to General Musharraf's comments. Do you think they will satisfy India?
MINTIER: Most likely not. I think now that they know he is going to address the Pakistani nation -- he made that announcement at the press conference following his meeting with Tony Blair -- they'll be waiting to see what he offers for domestic consumption. What he says in the press conference with Tony Blair is not as widely distributed around Pakistan. Remember, this is a nation of 140 million people and most of them don't watch English language television, where this press conference appeared.
So they'll be waiting to hear his speech in Urdu either tonight or tomorrow night and base their assumption on where he stands and where the Pakistan people stand on his speech.
COSTELLO: All right, Tom Mintier reporting live for us from Islamabad this morning, thank you.
And while the U.S. Senate has pledged reconstruction aid, U.S. bombers go on destroying suspected terrorist sites.
CNN's Jeff Levine has an update from the Pentagon -- good morning to you, Jeff.
JEFF LEVINE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Carol.
American planes are concentrating their firepower today on eastern Afghanistan. The area is near Khost on the Pakistani border. The assault actually began on Sunday.
Now, it's aimed at wiping out Taliban and al Qaeda fighters as they try to escape.
Many of the attacks are focused on the Zhawar Kili camp, a suspected terrorist training base. It supposedly contains ordinance, explosives and tunnels.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REAR ADMIRAL JOHN STUFFLEBEEM, PENTAGON SPOKESMAN: We're flying a little bit more than 100 sorties a day and we're using land based aircraft, the B-1s and the B-52s, our long range bombers. We're using the carrier based aircraft and coalition aircraft, carrier based as well as land based. They're predominantly flying close air support missions or on call interdiction missions to be called in by the special forces working with any Taliban forces.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEVINE: Other targets include mortars, machine gun emplacements and artillery in this ongoing operation.
The Pentagon says some Allied planes were flying over Pakistani air space then came back to Afghanistan to drop their bombs.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STUFFLEBEEM: The strike was prompted by the intelligence collected that there was a lot of stuff there. That's a large camp. There are kind of three areas to this camp as it moves down this large waddy (ph) above ground and in two separate cave areas. So there were a number, there are a number of caves to shut down, a number of above ground facilities that have been leveled now, or at least most of them have, and after the strikes on the third and fourth, over this weekend, lo and behold, we find tanks. So something is coming out of the ground and we're after it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEVINE: All that notwithstanding, the Pentagon says it still wants to capture Osama bin Laden but it's going to stop speculating about his whereabouts.
Meanwhile, in an interview with the Associated Press, U.S. General Tommy Franks, head of the central command, says that he, too, believes that bin Laden ultimately will be caught or captured.
Now, Franks also indicates that in the next day or two a couple of top officials from the al Qaeda and Taliban organizations will either surrender or be brought to justice -- Carol.
COSTELLO: All right, thank you very much.
Jeff Levine reporting live for us from the Pentagon this morning.
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