2 - The Michigan Daily - Friday, March 15, 2002 NATION/WORLD I All WASHIN A rhai ;n -Qaida leaders focus of search NEWS IN BRIEF GTON (AP) - The American military's More than five months into the war and six Bagram air base. "We did not have indications prior to empnass in Aghanilstan is shitting to the pursuit of clues to the whereabouts of the most senior al-Qaida leaders and the possibility of new combat operations against smaller pockets of resistance rather than fighting big battles. Although the al-Qaida appear to have lost the core of their fighting force, the U.S. military is not relax- ing. The Army's 101st Airborne Division says 600 soldiers from its 3rd Battalion at Fort Campbell, Ky., are heading to Afghanistan to join about 5,000 other U.S regular and special forces. The U.S. forces, working with allied soldiers and Afghans friendly to the American cause, are on the lookout for remnants of al-Qaida. The goal is to ensure they are unable to regroup in sufficient num- bers to challenge the interim Afghan government or to resume their terrorist training and planning. months after President Bush said he wanted the top al-Qaida leader, Osama bin Laden, "dead or alive," the military says it has little idea where he is - or whether he is alive. There was little expectation that bin Laden would be found in the Shah-e-Kot Valley, where U.S. and Afghan forces fought a 12-day battle against al- Qaida and Taliban fighters. Yesterday, coalition troops searched abandoned caves for material that might shed light on al-Qaida and its leaders. Maj. Gen. Frank Hagenbeck, commander of U.S. and coalition forces in the Shah-e-Kot battle, said yesterday the dead were "second and third tier" al- Qaida leaders. "The big names that you and I are most familiar with, however, indications are that they were not in this valley as we came here," he told reporters at the attack that they would be here. But we have indica- tions where they are, and I can assure you that we will track them down and get them before this is over." U.S. military officials in Washington said clues to the whereabouts of senior al-Qaida leaders are gener- ally not specific enough to act on and sometimes are contradictory. Increasingly, Bush administration officials are de- emphasizing the importance of capturing or killing bin Laden. Bush said Wednesday the al-Qaida leader, whom the president holds responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, had become "marginalized" by the U.S. military campaign. With the Taliban out of power and his own al-Qaida fighters defeated or dispersed beyond Afghanistan's borders, bin Laden has little opportunity to plan, organize or execute terrorist attacks against Americans, Bush said. AA U.S. bombs kill ghan .tr .f1 1' MI ' JERUSALEM Violence ensues despite peace talks An American envoy launched a new attempt yesterday to forge a Mideast truce amid the bloodiest period in 18 months of Israel-Palestinian fighting, and the United States pressed Israel to pull its soldiers from Palestinian cities. Israelis and Palestinians said they are ready to work with U.S. evnoy Anthony Zinni, but violence persisted. Israeli forces patrolling two West Bank towns killed five armed Palestinians in gunbattles and two militiamen in a helicopter attack in Gaza, while Palestinian militants set off a bomb under an Israeli tank, killing three soldiers. Each side warned it would keep fighting if the other did not end the vio- lence. The Palestinians demanded that Israel withdraw its troops from Palestinian towns, while Israel said Palestinian militants must stop attacks on Israelis. Beginning his peace mission against the backdrop of Israel's largest military operation since the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Zinni was to meet with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon later yesterday. Palestinian officials said Zinni, whose past two Mideast truce efforts have failed, would meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat tomorrow. WASHi hdTOh Saeed Sheikh charged for death of reporter' %,ZILG S anl spark cases CHOKER KARAIZ, Afghanistan (AP) - The stricken old man could barely walk through the rubble of his village. The vision of the torn bodies of women and children was still too real in his mind's eye. "Every time I walk through here, I see the scene all over again," Moham- mad Qasin said yesterday. Villagers say 52 people, mostly women and children, were killed in the bombing and strafing four months ago that obliterated this isolated hamlet, a few houses ringed by irrigated wheat fields among miles of semi-desert emptiness in southern Afghanistan. Now the case of Choker Karaiz is one of dozens of U.S. air attacks for which survivors have filed claims for compensation. "We don't know. God knows," sur- vivor Aziz Ahmed said yesterday when asked why U.S. pilots might have attacked this tiny, mud-walled place one night in late October. The government of Kandahar province alone has filed more than 70 compensation cases involving U.S. air attacks with the central government in Kabul, provincial spokesman Yusuf Pashtun said Wednesday. "Hamid Karzai said send them to the Ministry of the Interior," Pashtun said, referring to Afghanistan's interim national leader. Pashtun said four cases involved multiple deaths in Kandahar villages, withthe biggest being Choker Karaiz, 25 miles east of Kandahar city. The rest were cases of single deaths or limited damage here and there in the province, he said. Others, "hard to prove," were not forwarded to Kabul, he said. The provincial spokesman said he had no information on how the com- pensation process will work. It could not be learned immediately whether the U.S. government would consider such claims, or whether they would be handled exclusively by the Afghan government or by a joint commission. Maj. Brad Lowell, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said yesterday he was unaware of any process for Afghans to make claims against the U.S. military. The Pentagon has said civilians were never deliberately targeted during the bombing in Afghanistan but has acknowledged that some bombs went astray. Last month, however, the Pentagon acknowledged that U.S. Army forces killed 14 or more Afghans who were neither al-Qaida nor Taliban members during a raid in Uruzgan province in January. Provincial Gov. Jan Mohammed delivered $1,000 to $2,000 to each dead man's family, as well as a verbal apolo- gy relayed on behalf of high-ranking U.S. officials he declined to identify. The Taliban took a group of foreign reporters to the village in November and claimed 92 people died there. Reporters at the time counted about 15 graves. The Choker Karaiz raid is not among the incidents the U.S. military is investigating as possibly involving the killing of civilians, U.S. Central Command spokesman Lt. Col. Martin Compton said yesterday. Peter Bouckaert, a researcher with the New York-based Human Rights Watch, independently interviewed peo- ple in Choker Karaiz in an effort to establish a civilian casualty toll. "We believe that at least 25 and pos- sibly as many as 35 civilians died in this bombing raid. Often times civil- ians give random numbers that tend to be too high but we try to confirm as many as possible and we were able to confirm at least 25 here." Based on the interviews, Bouckaert learned that the convoy hit was of a A federal grand jury indicted a Muslim extremist yesterday in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. The charges carry the death penalty. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who is in custody in Pakistan, was charged with hostage-taking and conspiracy to commit hostage-taking, resulting in the death of Pearl. Saeed "methodically set a death trap for Daniel Pearl, lured him into it with lies and savagely ended his life," Attorney General John Ashcroft said in announcing the indictment returned in New Jersey. Authorities also unsealed an indictment that had secretly charged Saeed last year in a 1994 kidnapping of an American in India. Pearl was kidnapped in Janu- ary while pursuing a story in Pakistan related to Islamic fundamentalism. A grue- some videotape made by his captors surfaced after his death. Pearl leaves behind a widow who is about to give birth to the couple's first child. "The U.S. has not forsaken your husband nor the values he embodied and cher- ished," Ashcroft said, addressing comments to Pearl's widow. "The story he died trying to tell will be told, and justice will be done." 0 SANAA, Yemen Cheney tours Yemen to garner support Vice President Cheney yesterday took his Middle East tour to Yemen, one of the countries that administration officials say has taken the greatest strides since Sept. 11 in cooperating with the United States in tackling the al-Qaida network. American concerns about continuing presence of militant groups in Yemen were underscored by the exceptional security measures taken for Cheney's trip here to the capital. He arrived in a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane, leaving his regular airliner behind in Egypt along with much of his staff and most of the traveling press corps and never leaving the airport before flying on to neighboring Oman only two hours later. But his visit to Sanaa to meet Presi- dent Ali Abdullah Salih was an impor- tant endorsement for the Yemeni leader, who weeks ago asked President Bush to have Cheney include the country in his tour. WASHINGTON Andersen accounting indicted in scandal The Arthur Andersen accounting firm was charged with obstruction of justice stemming from its destruction of "tons of paper" on Enron Corp., the first indictment in the company's collapse. The one-count indictment, announced yesterday, was returned last week by a federal grand jury in Hous- ton, where Enron is based, Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson said. Andersen hlid been given a 9 a.m. deadline yesterday to agree to plead guilty. The firm has admitted that some of its employees destroyed Enron docu- ments but that top management at head- quarters in Chicago was unaware. Andersen said criminal proceedings were tantamount to a "death penalty" against the firm, and it accused the Jus- tice Department of "a gross abuse of governmental power." 44 TOKYO Musharraf appeals to U.N. for more forces The war in Afghanistan is "absolute- ly over," Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf said here yesterday, and "whatever remains to be done, I would call it mopping up." Musharraf, on a four-day--visit. to Japan, nonetheless appealed to the Unit- ed States and international peacekeep- ing forces to remain in Afghanistan and increase their authority until the politi- cal situation there is stabilized. He said the war in neighboring Afghanistan "was over when the legiti- mate government" returned to Kabul. "The war in its initial sense, when it started with the Taliban, is absolutely over." Musharraf's comments are out of sync with those of the United States, which has been loath to declare an end to the conflict. - Compiled from Daily wire reports. 0 in le PubSection t: I M Publication'Da-e S.A Thursday, 03.28.02 $40 if placed by , 03.15.02 (first come, ; first serve color option) $45 if p8 lacdbtween 03.18.02-03.21.02 (no colon) 'A",,X X ~5,' c~-o t 4 F~m *f.7.Av~- z -c-u-'AN iaily The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is published Monday through Friday during the fall and winter terms by students at the University of Michigan. Subscriptions for fall term, starting in September, via U.S. mail are $105. Winter term (January through April) is $110, yearlong (September through April) is $190. University affiliates are subject to a reduced subscription rate. On-campus subscriptions for fall term are $35. Subscrip- tions must be prepaid. The Michigan Daily is a member of The Associated Press and The Associated Colle- giate Press. 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