Russian secret services win the game

The FSB has pinpointed Bin Laden’s location and has provided flight plans to the forces allied against terrorism, which are ready to strike at Afghanistan if Bin Laden is not handed over. The Taliban is showing signs that they might be ready to negotiate.

It is believed that Osama Bin Laden is holed up in the almost impenetrable 7-kilometre high mountain fortress of Pamir, in northeastern Afghanistan. Flight plans into the area have been made available to the US-led coalition by the authorities of the Russian Federation. The FSB, the Russian Federation Secret Services, have been tracking the movements of Osama Bin laden for some time.

The Taliban authorities are showing clear signs that they are willing to negotiate, unless there is a split in their leadership between hard-liners and more pragmatic realists who fear that an attack on their country would provoke a humanitarian disaster. The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, declared that “the Afghan people need help, not war”. He said that the humanitarian situation of the country was very precarious, with millions of displaced persons.

In an apparent change of tone from the Taliban administration, if ambassador Zaeef is representative of the line of thinking in Kabul, he stated that “we are the first to condemn what happened. We condemn terrorism and terrorist attacks”. He added that if the Taleban were handed proof that Osama Bin laden was involved in the September 11 attacks, there would be negotiation to hand him over. This is significant because only yesterday, the Taliban Defence Minister Mullah Obaidullah, was declaring: “Fight hard, defend your country. If your enemy is strong, our God is the strongest”.

The concrete proof was divulged by Washington yesterday afternoon through diplomatic channels. The exact content is classified information but it was declared that both Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden were involved in the attacks as authors and accomplices. It has been revealed that Bin laden himself made a telephone call to his mother moments before the attacks, telling her that he would not be able to communicate for some time because something important was about to happen.

The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, declared today in Brighton that “lasting good emerging from the shadow of evil” must be the memorial for those who died or lost family members on September 11th. It could be that the determined position assumed by the alliance against evil, backed by most of the world’s intelligence services, has forced the Taliban to change their minds regarding their most famous, or infamous, guest.

With Pakistan resigned to the fact that action is going to be taken, countries which were formerly hostile to the USA, like the Sudan, have recently made declarations against terrorism and have started to detain suspects. The White House has made it clear that those who harbour terrorists will meet the same fate as the terrorists themselves.

There seems to be a hidden and unwritten promise to the Moslem world that collaboration with the alliance against terrorism could augur well for the creation of a State of Palestine. Such would work wonders to defuse the present state of events in the world today.

We are possibly on the threshold of the much-vaunted and hitherto invisible new world order, one in which rights are respected across the board, not just a chosen few and one in which the law of reason has more power than powerful lobbyists. The attacks on September 11th showed that nobody, anywhere, is untouchable. Collaboration, and not intrusion, is the order of the day.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ru LISBON PORTUGAL