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KABUL/WASHINGTON - British Royal Marines landed in Kabul on Thursday as the vanguard of an international peacekeeping force, while U.S. President George W. Bush heralded 100 days of progress in the U.S. led war on terrorism.

With the war giving way to a manhunt for Osama bin Laden, U.S. agents interrogated captured fighters for clues in the search for the Saudi-born militant suspected of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks on America that killed more than 3,200 people.

In Washington, Bush said much had been accomplished in the first 100 days of the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism.

"We've built a broad international coalition against terror," he said. "We broke the Taliban's grip on Afghanistan. We took the war to the al Qaeda terrorists. We're securing our airways. We're defending our homeland. And we're attacking the terrorists' international financial network."

Bush also announced action to block the assets of two groups he said had links to terrorism" the Kashmir separatist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, also known as Army of the Righteous, and Umma Tameer-e-Nau, which he said was established by a former Pakistan atomic energy commission official and masqueraded as a charity for the hungry in Afghanistan.

In reality, Bush said, the group gave nuclear weapons information to bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

"LET is a stateless sponsor of terrorism, and it hopes to destroy relations between Pakistan and India and undermine Pakistani's president, (Pervez) Musharraf. To achieve its purpose, LET has committed acts of terrorism inside both India and Pakistan," Bush said.

At Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, 53 British Royal Marines landed Thursday to take up a security role in the capital ahead of the installation of a new interim government this weekend.

Britain is leading the international force intended to nurture the country's fragile peace. The force was officially authorized Thursday by the U.N. Security Council.

Company commander Maj. Matt Jones said he and his men comprised the initial stage of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). "We are here to start providing security and assistance," he said.

"We will be assisting with the running and providing a presence at the inauguration of the interim government," he said referring to Saturday's ceremony in the Afghan capital.

Afghan factions agreed in Bonn to set up a six-month interim government to replace the Taliban, routed by their local opponents backed by weeks of U.S. air strikes. Part of the deal is the dispatch of a multinational security force.

Jones said the mission would begin Friday when his men, accompanied by Afghan security forces, would accompany VIPs arriving for the ceremony from Bagram Airbase to Kabul.

In a "softly softly" approach to the citizens of war-torn Kabul, Jones said the troops would be keeping a low profile. They would wear berets, not helmets, ride in unarmored Land Rovers and would carry only light arms.

"Afghanistan particularly probably has a sensitivity to foreign troops. We have no reason to upset anyone," he said.

Differences over the size and role of the force have dogged discussions between interim Afghan defense minister Mohammad Fahim and senior military officers from Britain and other contributing nations.

Fahim last week said the force for Kabul should number only 1,000 and be restricted to guarding ministers and meetings of the new administration. Germany has envisioned an eventual peacekeeping force of as many as 8,000 troops, while U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said during a visit to American forces at Bagram Sunday that he envisaged 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers.

Britain sees a possible expansion of the peacekeepers' role beyond Kabul, and said Thursday it will hand over leadership of the international force to another nation after three months.

British Foreign Minister Jack Straw told U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in a letter Thursday that he saw "possible future expanded security assistance in other areas of Afghanistan."

"The United Kingdom is prepared to serve as initial lead nation for a period of approximately three months for this multinational operation," Straw said in the letter, adding it would hand over leadership "no later than 30 April 2002."

He added that the peacekeepers would also help the Afghan authorities "in the establishment and training of new Afghan security and armed forces."

Francesc Vendrell, the deputy U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan, told reporters the force would give the interim government a sense of security.

"I think it will give the right atmosphere and will provide a sense of security for those people who are coming to participate in the interim authority who are not from the United Front (Northern Alliance) side," he said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate approved a bill that would allow victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and their families to watch a closed-circuit television broadcast of the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, an alleged conspirator.

The measure, approved on a voice vote, would allow closed-circuit broadcasts to at least six locations directly affected by the attacks -- northern Virginia, New York, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Newark, New Jersey.

These were the sites of the attacks or were the take-off or scheduled arrival cities of the four hijacked aircraft and would be expected to have the highest concentration of victims and families.

Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, charged with six counts of conspiracy in the first criminal charges directly related to the attack, will be tried in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Federal courts do not allow proceedings to be televised.

In Peshawar, Pakistan, officials said all but five of the more than 20 suspected al Qaeda fighters who escaped on Wednesday after a bloody gun battle with their guards, had been recaptured.

They said two Arab escapees and a Pakistani paramilitary officer were killed on a hill in the remote northwestern Kurram tribal areas near the Afghan border, bringing the death toll from two days of clashes to 18, he said.

The captives, arrested as they fled battles in Tora Bora across the border in Afghanistan, were being taken to jail by bus when they turned on their army guards, grabbed weapons and opened fire, North West Frontier provincial officials said.

Eight suspected al Qaeda Arabs and seven Pakistani soldiers and paramilitaries, including a bus driver, were killed.

Rumsfeld said Pakistan border patrols had arrested hundreds of suspected al Qaeda fighters fleeing Tora Bora. As well as Yemenis, the fighters were from Chechnya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Morocco and Sudan. Nampa-Reuters

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