Sat, Oct 13, 2001 page4

• FBI warns of new attacks, police on alert

  UNUSUAL ACTIVITY The president warns the effort to snuff out terrorism will be a long one and that the fight in Aghanistan will go on for `as long as it takes'

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  Thursday marked the one-month anniversary of the terror attacks in New York and Arlington, Virginia, and with the memorial services came reminders that the crisis was far from over.

  The FBI warned that terrorists could strike against the US at home or abroad in the next several days, while President George W. Bush said American forces would fight in Afghanistan "as long as it takes."

  The terse public warning by the FBI gave no information about the scope or nature of the threat, nor where it might occur. The public statement called on all local law enforcement to be on the "highest alert," and urged people to notify officials of "any unusual or suspicious activity."

  

  New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and others observe a short interfaith memorial service held at the World Trade Center disaster site on Thursday morning in New York. One month after two hijacked airliners toppled the World Trade Center, hundreds at the site stopped for a moment of silence at 8:48am to remember the missing and dead.

  PHOTO: AP

  In his first prime-time news conference, Bush sought to depict the threat as part of a new reality, and urged people to go about their normal lives. The warnings, he said, showed that "the government is on full alert." He urged people to return to normal lives, to travel and work.

  At the news conference, and earlier at a memorial service at the Pentagon, Bush also stressed that the campaign against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks could be a long one. "We have entered a struggle of uncertain duration," he told an emotional gathering in front of the damaged west wall of the Pentagon, but "we can be certain of the outcome."

  At what has come to be known as "Ground Zero," the site of the destroyed World Trade Center, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani presided over a memorial ceremony that began at 8:48am, the moment when the first hijacked airliner slammed into one of the twin towers. "Sometimes it feels like yesterday," he said. "Sometimes it feels like a year ago or more."

  It was likely to feel a lot longer before it was over. American and British military officials said they were preparing for a military operation stretching at least into next summer, after which there would be the task of building an Afghan government and economy virtually from scratch.

  The bombing of Taliban and al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan continued around-the-clock for the fifth day, confronting Bush with just the sort of situation he denounced during the election campaign -- a military operation likely to keep American forces in Central Asia for months or years, followed by the long, costly and difficult task of building a viable Afghanistan.

  Even as bombs continued to fall, including 5,000-pound "bunker busters" designed to destroy underground command posts, more American troops were flying into Uzbekistan and Pakistan.

  The British were there too: Admiral Michael Boyce, Britain's military chief of staff, said that if ground troops would be needed, a commando brigade of Royal Marines trained for mountain and winter warfare might well be deployed.

  From the ground, however, there was no evidence that Taliban forces were disintegrating, at least for now. On the contrary, reports reaching Pakistan said the Taliban were reinforcing their forces along the front 56km north of Kabul, the Afghan capital, in part with Arab and Pakistani recruits.

  The indications were that the Americans were deliberately leaving the Taliban intact on the northern front to keep the opposition Northern Alliance out of Kabul until there was an agreement in place on a new government.

  The FBI warning followed a month of investigation by the FBI, CIA and foreign security agencies that have convinced them that the al-Qaeda network remains a serious and continuing terror threat. Their investigations found that al-Qaeda was not a loose cluster of aggrieved Islamic militants, but a centrally controlled organization in which local operatives receive money, manpower and expertise from the center.

  Investigators in Europe, said they were finding that al-Qaeda had cells throughout Europe similar to the one in Germany that is believed to have played a key role in planning the attacks on the US.

  For all the indications that the crisis was far from over, there were also signs that people were regaining confidence.

  Stock prices rose sharply, recovering all the losses suffered in the days after the attacks on the World Trade Center. The rebound reflected a sense that the military action was going well, and offered hope that businesses will weather the crisis.
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