============================================================ --> WHAT'S THAT?, YOU WANNA MAKE A LIVING ONLINE? People from all walks of life are becoming wealthy online. Could YOU do it too? Find out in this free step-by-step guide to Making a Living Online. (By someone actually doing it!): http://click.topica.com/caaadtxb1ddNBb2HgmNb/bizweb2000 ============================================================Blair Gives Taliban Ultimatum on Terrorism
By JILL LAWLESS
.c The Associated Press
BRIGHTON, England (Oct. 2)- British Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a ringing call Tuesday for action against terror, saying Afghanistan's Taliban regime must ``surrender the terrorists or surrender power.''
``This is a battle with only one outcome. Our victory, not theirs,'' Blair told his Labor Party.
In one of the toughest warnings yet to the Taliban from a Western leader, Blair said there could be no compromise with terrorism and promised Britain would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States in the struggle.
Blair gave no indication of when military action might start. He said the main target would be bin Laden. But if the Taliban do not surrender the terrorists, he said, action would also aim to ``eliminate their military hardware, cut off their finances, disrupt their supplies, target their troops, not civilians.''
``I say to the Taliban: Surrender the terrorists or surrender power,'' he said.
Blair's speech came as President Bush's coordinator for counterterrorism briefed NATO officials in Brussels on the United States' evidence of top suspect Osama bin Laden's involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks.
NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson said the evidence presented by U.S. Ambassador at Large Francis X. Taylor was ``clear and compelling'' and that in response NATO had invoked Article 5 of its charter, which says that an attack on one member is an attack on all 19 members.
The hard-line Islamic Taliban militia, who rule almost all Afghanistan, have refused to surrender bin Laden, who has lived in the country since 1996 leading his al-Qaida organization, which U.S. officials call an international network of terrorists.
In an emotional speech, Blair pointed to the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and said the Taliban regime had no ``moral inhibition'' on slaughtering innocent people.
``There is no compromise possible with such people, no meeting of minds, no point of understanding with such terror,'' he said. ``There is just a choice: Defeat it or be defeated by it and defeat it we must.''
``Whatever the dangers of the action we take, the dangers of inaction are far, far greater,'' he said.
Blair, who toured the site of the destruction in New York, said the loved ones of the victims ``don't want revenge.'' What is needed, he said, is the ``destruction of the machinery of terrorism wherever it is found.''
On Monday, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said he had all but given up on efforts to mediate the standoff between the Taliban and Washington over bin Laden, the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 suicide hijacking attacks in New York and Washington.
Musharraf told the BBC that it now ``appears that the United States will take action in Afghanistan, and we have conveyed this to the Taliban.''
Asked if the Taliban's days were numbered, he replied: ``It appears so.''
The Taliban said Sunday they know where bin Laden is, and that he is under their control. Previously, they had said they didn't know the Saudi exile's location, but they could deliver messages to him.
Blair's speech came as the United States continues a massive military buildup around Afghanistan. The aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk left its base in Japan on Monday to join other American forces being positioned for possible action.
The Bush administration has given few details of possible military action. ``On the military front we're making progress,'' President Bush said Monday.
On Monday, the former Afghan king and an alliance of opposition groups in northern Afghanistan agreed to convene an emergency council of tribal and military leaders as a first step toward forming a new government in Afghanistan.
AP-NY-10-02-01 1022EDT
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press.
"Never cease in the fight for peace, justice, and equality for all people. Be persistent in all that you do and don't allow anyone to sway you from your conscience.".....Leonard Peltier
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