Three more cases of exposure to anthrax were reported in New York on Sunday, as the Bush administration took to the airwaves to calm Americans in what it is now calling a clear case of bioterrorism.
'There's no question that it's bioterrorism,' Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said. 'But whether or not it's connected to al Qaeda, we can't say that conclusively.'
The latest reports bring to 12 the number of people known to have been exposed to anthrax in two states, New York and Florida. Pornographic material mailed from Malaysia to a Microsoft office in Nevada was confirmed Saturday to contain anthrax, but none of the six people tested there has yet tested positive for exposure.
Fed up with waiting, Afghan rebel commanders say they are preparing to launch a drive to recapture Kabul within days even without U.S. military help or a political agreement on the shape of a post-Taliban government.
Trucks filled with soldiers and parades of guerrilla fighters on foot headed south in greater numbers this weekend from the Panjshir Valley in northern Afghanistan to the front lines about 25 miles north of the capital. All told, according to one rebel officer, 6,000 troops have been moved from the Panjshir in the past week as part of a mobilization of 25,000 fighters for an assault on Kabul.
As warplanes began a second week of attacks over Afghanistan, President Bush curtly rejected a new proposal Sunday from the Taliban regime to negotiate conditions for handing over terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.
'This is nonnegotiable,' Bush said. 'There's nothing to negotiate. They're harboring a terrorist. They need to turn him over.'
The president spoke in response to a proposal from Afghanistan's deputy prime minister, Haji Abdul Kabir. Kabir, one of the most powerful figures in the Taliban, said in Jalalabad that if Bush halted the air attacks and provided evidence that bin Laden was behind the Sept. 11 hijackings that killed 5,400 people, the Taliban would discuss sending him to a third country.
Bin Laden's dispatch 'can be negotiated,' Kabir said at a news conference, according to news agency reports from Afghanistan, 'provided the U.S. gives us evidence and the Taliban are assured that the country is neutral and will not be influenced by the United States.'
But Bush said: 'When I said no negotiations, I meant no negotiations.'
As Secretary of State Colin Powell arrives in Islamabad, Pakistan, today to reinforce Pakistan's new anti-terrorist alliance with the United States, anti-American sentiment is growing rapidly across Pakistan, with a wide cross-section of the public expressing concern about the short-term human damage and long-term political consequences of the U.S. military campaign against neighboring Afghanistan.
Last week, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf confidently claimed that only an extremist Islamic minority of between 10 and 15 percent of the population opposed his decision to side with the United States in its anti-terrorism campaign and airstrikes against Afghanistan. So far, most public protests, including a mob attack Sunday on a Pakistani airfield containing U.S. military planes, have been confined to those groups.
But the mood across this Muslim nation is changing rapidly. Now, opinion-makers who initially supported Musharraf's decision are beginning to voice grave doubts. Moderate Pakistanis, who would ordinarily have little sympathy for either bin Laden or for the radical Islamic Taliban regime in Afghanistan that shelters him, are angrily criticizing the government's policy.
Suddenly, T-shirts with bin Laden's portrait are on sale in every urban market. In elegant drawing rooms as well as run-down mosques, many Pakistani Muslims insist that Israel must have been behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
