US Policy in Central Asia, Item # 2 [forward]

 US/Russia/Uzbekistan/bin Laden/Taliban (fwd)

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                 ANDRE  GUNDER  FRANK

         1601 SW  83rd Avenue, Miami, FL.  33155 USA
      Tel: 1-305-266  0311   Fax:  1-305  266 0799
                E-Mail :  franka@fiu.edu
   Web/Home Page:  http://csf.colorado.edu/archive/agfrank
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From:  Central Asia Online <centralasiaonline@yahoo.com>  
Date:  Sun, 10 Dec 2000 22:12:41 -0800 (PST) 
To:  All recepients <tranesonic@yahoo.com> 
Subject:  CAO 110 
    
UK ISLAMIC CENTRE: US SEEKING "UNDERSTANDING" WITH BIN
LADEN 
London-based newspaper 'Al-Sharq al-Awsat' . Posted
Dec 7, 2000 
Citing Arab sources in Afghanistan, the London-based
Islamic Observation Centre [IOC] has revealed that the
US administration has sent messages to Usamah
Bin-Ladin a few weeks after the start of the
investigations into the bombing of the US destroyer
USS Cole in Yemen on 12th October. The explosion
killed 17 out of the destroyer's 294 crew members and
injured 39 others. 

The sources said non-Afghan figures carried these
messages that included a US offer not to attack
Afghanistan and what are believed to be Usamah
Bin-Ladin centres in it, in addition to stop demanding
his deportation from Afghanistan or his extradition to
the United States. Washington asked in return for
Bin-Ladin's announcement of a halt to his campaign
against the United States and its presence in the Gulf
region and Arab countries. 

According to the IOC, which is known for its
sympathetic reporting of the fundamentalists' news,
the US messages carriers reported that they received
assurances from the US administration that it does not
have any conclusive evidence of the personal
involvement of Bin-Ladin, whom Washington has accused
of planning the attacks on the US embassies in Kenya
and Tanzania in 1998 that killed more than 200
persons, in the Cole incident.

[AGF comment: Yet ABC  National News carried a longish
report claiming that US government sources have 
"some new evidence that  bin Laden MAY have been involved.
Is this an attempt to prepare US. and other public 'opinion'
for a prepared strike against bin Laden & Taliban?]

'Al-Sharq al-Awsat' received yesterday a copy of the
IOC statement, which said that the US embassy in
Islamabad has confirmed the reports about Washington's
recent dispatch of messages to Bin-Ladin and that it
is seeking to establish a channel of communications
with him as part of its efforts to contain the waves
of international terrorism. 

Arab circles in Afghanistan believe that the main
reason for sending such messages to Bin-Ladin at
present is the US fears of the growing hostility to it
in the Arab world in the wake of the Al-Aqsa intifadah
and the unlimited US backing for Israel against the
Palestinians. Reports of these contacts come amid
successive reports of an imminent US air strike or
missile attack on Afghanistan's territories and bases
of Bin-Ladin's Al-Qa'idah Organization. But Central
Asian countries have started to distance themselves
from the US plans one after the other. Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan have announced that they
are not willing to provide any land facilities for the
US forces if Washington decides to strike Afghanistan.


Sources in Islamabad pointed out that the reason for
the delay in carrying out the US strike is
Washington's lack of any evidence against Bin-Ladin in
addition to its fears of the fundamentalist groups'
angry and violent reactions. 

UZBEKISTAN BACKS SANCTIONS AGAINST TALIBAN: US
OFFICIAL 
AFP. Posted Dec 8, 2000 
Uzbekistan has voiced its support for more sanctions
against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, helping to
counter resurgent Islamic extremism in the region, a
senior US official said Thursday.

Stephen Sestanovich, US State Department advisor on
former Soviet republics, said the Uzbek government
supported fresh United Nations sanctions which could
be added to aviation and financial curbs imposed on
the Taliban militia. The introduction of sanctions
"will prevent terrorists from increasing their
activity inside and outside Afghanistan," Sestanovich
said.

Regional leaders have lately softened their policy
towards the Taliban in what they have called a
recognition of realities in the war-torn state, where
the militia controls 90 percent of the territory.
However, "governments in the region ... do not
recognise the Taliban, as the Taliban's actions
represent a threat to the region," Sestanovich said.
"There is no talk of recognising the Taliban," Uzbek
Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov said.The new
sanctions include a unilateral arms embargo against
the Taliban but not their opponents in the north of
the country, a freeze on Bin Laden's financial assets
and the closure of all Taliban offices overseas,
according to the State Department. 


U.S. AND RUSSIA CLEAR 'LAST BIG HURDLE' TOWARD
TIGHTENING SANCTIONS AGAINST TALIBAN
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- The United States and Russia
removed a major obstacle Monday standing in the way of
passing a Security Council resolution that would
impose a wide range of sanctions against Afghanistan's
Taliban regime. A senior administration source told
CNN late Monday the Chinese dropped their opposition
to the resolution and are "going to abstain." 

That "removed the last big hurdle," said this
official, who has nurtured the resolution since its
inception last summer. Officials said the resolution
could be introduced to the Security Council as soon as
Tuesday. As one of the five permanent members of the
15-member Security Council, China would have been able
to kill the resolution if it had decided to veto,
rather than abstain from voting. 

Arms embargo expected 
Officials said the sanctions would include an arms
embargo against the Taliban -- unless it stopped
harboring terrorists, curtailed the illegal drug trade
and turned over accused terrorist Osama bin Laden. 

The weapons embargo would be imposed only against the
Taliban, not against the rebel Northern Alliance,
which has been fighting a civil war against the
Taliban for years. The Taliban controls about 90
percent of Afghan territory. The embargo would be
lifted if the Taliban were to expel bin Laden, the
former Saudi businessman who is now living in
Afghanistan. U.S. law enforcement officials have
linked bin Laden to the 1998 bombings of the U.S.
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 234
people. 




NEW YORK TIMES December 8, 2000
U.S. and Russia Ask Harsh Sanctions on Afghanistan
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 7 
The common ground taken by the Russians and Americans in demonizing the
Taliban follows their taking exactly opposite sides in the catastrophic
civil war that followed the Soviet invasion of 1979. 
....
The agreement by the Russians and Americans on sanctions is also
rare. They both are concerned about the Taliban's influence across Central
Asia and beyond, concluding that the Islamic movement supports Muslim
militancy and international terrorism. Both Moscow and Washington discount
fears that the new sanctions could harden the Taliban's position and ruin
prospects of a negotiated settlement of the Afghan civil war.

Sergey Lavrov, the Russian ambassador, told reporters today that the new
measures would leave "ample room" for peace talks to continue, a point
also made by American officials.
....

Russians accuse the Taliban of involvement in the war in Chechnya. The
United States is focused on the sanctuary in Afghanistan of the Saudi-born
financier of militancy, Osama bin Laden, who is wanted in the United
States on charges of being behind the bombings of two American embassies
in Africa in 1998. 
....

In New York, the Taliban's representative, who may be forced to leave the
United States under the new sanctions, said the proposed measures had more
to do with Russian policy in Central Asia than the situation in
Afghanistan. He predicted that the country would close ranks against
outsiders and become more defiant.

Under the Russian-American resolution, which is almost certain to pass in
the next week or two, the Council would demand the closing of all Taliban
diplomatic offices around the world and those of Afghanistan's national
airline, Ariana. All flights to or from landlocked Afghanistan, except for
relief missions and religious pilgrimages, would be banned. 

A comprehensive arms embargo would be imposed on the Taliban, but not on
the opposition army of former American-backed mujahedeen struggling to
keep a foothold in about 5 percent of the country. To curb the production
of heroin in Afghanistan, the world's biggest opium grower, the sale of a
chemical used in the making of heroin, acetic anhydride, would be banned.

Current sanctions restrict some flights of the Afghan airline and block
off any Taliban financial assets abroad.

The Russian-American resolution demands not only the surrender of Mr. bin
Laden, whose financial assets would be frozen worldwide, but also the
closing of all training camps for Islamic militants. Sanctions would not
end until all conditions were met.