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Wednesday, January 16, 2002 - Web posted at 10:35:44 am GMT

KABUL/WASHINGTON - U.S. warplanes hunted new targets on Tuesday after demolishing al Qaeda and Taliban hideouts in eastern Afghanistan, as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell headed for the stricken nation to pledge support for reconstruction after three decades of war.

In a reminder of the danger still facing U.S. ground forces, Marines seized weapons including rocket-propelled grenades and mortar bombs hidden in tunnels and under a building on the doorstep of their base at Kandahar airport, in southern Afghanistan.

The ammunition and tunnel system were probably linked to a brief, surprise small-arms attack on the Marines' camp last Thursday, when the first planeload of al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners was taking off for interrogation at an American military base in Cuba, military sources said.

With dozens more prisoners expected to be flown to Cuba, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said captured American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh will face criminal charges of aiding and abetting a terrorist organization and could face life imprisonment.

"Walker knowingly and purposely allied himself with certain terrorist organizations," Ashcroft said. "He chose to embrace fanatics and his allegiance to those fanatics and terrorists never faltered, not even with the knowledge that they had murdered thousands of his countrymen."

The decision on Walker meant that President George W. Bush had opted against putting the American on trial before a military tribunal, where he could have faced the death penalty.

With the hunt still on for Osama bin Laden, blamed by Washington for Sept. 11 attacks on the United States that killed more than 3,000 people, and his Afghan protector, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, attention turned to Afghanistan's interim rulers and their ability to restore stability to a shattered people.

Bringing Afghanistan back into the international fold, the U.N. Security Council, at the initiative of the United States, lifted sanctions on Tuesday on the national Afghan airline.

The resolution was a prelude to an overhaul of sanctions against Afghanistan that the council is expected to approve before Friday, including allowing the country's central bank to operate again. This would allow release of funds frozen while the Taliban was in power, including some $221 million in gold reserves and cash in the United States.

As part of his Asian trip, Powell will attend the opening session of an international conference on Afghan reconstruction in Tokyo on Jan. 21.

ARMS CACHE SEIZED

A Japanese government source in Tokyo said Japan may pledge as much as $500 million over the next 2 1/2 years for reconstruction when donors gather at the meeting.

In Kabul, major donor countries met Afghan and U.N. officials to seek ways to secure urgent funds for the bankrupt government, which is concerned about rising banditry and disarming veterans of the conflict.

Rebuilding Afghanistan will cost about $15 billion over 10 years, according to a new study by the Asian Development Bank, World Bank and the U.N. Development Program. That number is far short of the $45 billion the Afghan Planning Ministry wants.

In Afghanistan, U.S. planes, which in recent days leveled about 60 buildings and closed entrances to dozens of caves in the Zawar Kili region of eastern Afghanistan, were looking for fresh targets of opportunity and acting to prevent al Qaeda and Taliban forces from regrouping or operating.

The weapons seized by Marines on Tuesday were found just 300 yards (meters) from the perimeter of their base after a group of six or seven men was spotted in the area on Monday evening, U.S. Capt. Daniel Greenwood said.

"We decided to take immediate action," he said.

Light armored vehicles entered the area, backed up by attack helicopters, and troops found several cave entrances, tunnels as well as crawl spaces, under a building not far from the U.S. positions.

There, within firing range, they found the caches of mortar bomb fuses, mortar bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. The men had disappeared. The ammunition, along with the building, tunnels and cave entrances were blown up, said Greenwood, adding he believed the ammunition and tunnel system were linked to Thursday's small-arms attack.

No U.S. troops were hurt in the probing fire by eight to 14 gunmen armed with AK-47 assault rifles and using flares to illuminate U.S. Marine positions but it was a grim warning that pockets of resistance were still active.

WALKER KNEW OF SUICIDE MISSIONS, AFFIDAVIT SAYS

Walker was charged with conspiracy to kill Americans overseas, providing support and resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda and engaging in prohibited transactions with the Taliban.

The case has drawn attention in the United States as people debate whether Walker was a traitor.

In one training camp in Afghanistan in June, Walker learned from one of his instructors that bin Laden had sent people to the United States to carry out several suicide operations, according to the affidavit.

The 20-year-old Californian was captured in December after a prison uprising among Taliban fighters at which CIA operative Mike Spann was killed.

He is the only "detainee" being held aboard the U.S. Navy warship Bataan in the Arabian Sea. He is among 483 al Qaeda and Taliban members in the custody of the U.S. military, 50 of them now at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

At the base in Cuba, navy doctors operated on one captive after he was sedated for pain from a month-old gunshot wound.

Defense Department spokeswoman Victoria Clarke, countering concerns of human rights groups, said the wound in the upper arm of the man was about a month old and that the successful surgical procedure to open and drain it was explained to the captive before it was done.

"It was because he was in a lot of pain," Clarke said of the decision to sedate the man, who was flown out of Kandahar with 19 other al Qaeda and Taliban detainees.

The fact that U.S. officials raised the possibility that some of what the Pentagon calls "very dangerous" supporters of bin Laden might have to be sedated during flights to Cuba, had sparked sharp criticism from human rights groups. The prisoners are particularly considered a danger to their guards.

Amnesty International and some other groups are challenging conditions under which the captives are being held at Guantanamo Bay, including the use of temporary and small outdoor cells until larger jail facilities are built.

The Pentagon is calling the captives "unlawful combatants," refusing to designate them "prisoners of war." "The United States is placing these people in a legal limbo," Amnesty International said.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the treatment of the prisoners was humane, they were being fed well and new facilities to house them were under construction. "I can assure you that these folks are in an environment that is a lot more hospitable than the environments we found them in," he said.

Virtually all the detainees have been turned over by Afghan and Pakistani militaries. The number of detainees has been growing daily, and dozens more are expected to be sent to Guantanamo Bay, where they could face military trials authorized by Bush. Nampa-Reuters 0233 160102 WEB story ENDS (NAMPA 160231)

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