US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed speculation yesterday that the US campaign in Afghanistan could drag on for years and said the effectiveness of US bombing was improving daily.
"There's no question the effectiveness of the bombing is vastly improved as you have people on the ground in communication with the aircraft overhead," he told reporters in New Delhi as he wound up a tour of five key US allies in the region.
Rumsfeld, who briefed Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes on military developments in Afghanistan, said there were larger numbers of teams on the ground helping with both humanitarian aid and targeting.
"The effectiveness of the bombing is improving every day," said the US defense chief who arrived from Islamabad on Sunday.
"Do I think Afghanistan will take years? No I don't," he said and added the campaign was being pursued "very aggressively."
As Rumsfeld spoke, US aircraft continued to blast Afghanistan's ruling Taliban in the capital Kabul and on their front lines to the north.
Rockets fired from US aircraft blasted a hotel and vehicles used by Taliban fighters in Kabul, littering the street with wreckage and body parts.
The sound of helicopters was heard before the rockets slammed into the hotel just before dawn. That would mark a change in US tactics from using high-flying jets.
Rumsfeld told reporters in Islamabad on Sunday the Taliban were no longer functioning as a proper government but that the terror networks they harbored still posed a threat to global security.
Rumsfeld, the latest in a parade of big-name visitors to New Delhi on missions to bolster the anti-terror coalition, said the global campaign against terrorism was "something we'll have to continue over a period of time."
"With the increasing availability of very powerful weapons -- in some cases weapons of mass destruction -- the risk they'll fall into terrorist hands poses a threat that is unique in the history of mankind," he said.
He made no mention of US concerns that escalating tensions between nuclear-armed foes India and Pakistan over disputed Kashmir could undermine the campaign to oust the Taliban from power in Afghanistan.
Rumsfeld held out hope to India, however, that its concerns over what it calls "cross-border terrorism" in Muslim-majority Kashmir would eventually be addressed in the global campaign.
"This is much bigger than Afghanistan. Afghanistan happens to be the first problem because the al-Qaeda organization is there ... but there's no doubt in my mind that we'll be pursuing terrorist networks wherever we find them," he said.
US warplanes pounded Taliban lines north of the Afghan capital as well as key cities in the south and west, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press agency reported.
"We don't know about deaths, but some Taliban have been wounded and one part of the hotel has been damaged," said Abdul Hanan Himat, an information ministry spokesman in Kabul.
Himat said 15 civilians were killed overnight and 22 wounded by US bombings in the southern city of Kandahar and in the Keshendeh area in the south of the northern province of Balkh.
There was no independent confirmation of the report.
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