The Pentagon hopes Afghans motivated by the Taliban's collapse and millions in US reward money will find Osama bin Laden's hide-out so US troops won't have to hunt cave-to-cave for him, US Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday.
President Bush said gains by anti-Taliban forces gave him encouragement that the military was closing in on bin Laden. "The noose is beginning to narrow," Bush said.
The US approach, at least for now, is to continue bombing suspected hide-outs while leaving it to local people to search on the ground, Rumsfeld said. He suggested a $25 million reward plus extra bounty offered by the CIA may prompt Afghans to "begin crawling through those tunnels and caves."
If the job eventually falls to the US military, it will require different kinds of forces than the special operations troops now in Afghanistan, the defense secretary said. He did not elaborate, but other officials have said the task might fall to an infantry unit like the Army's 10th Mountain Division.
Speaking at a Pentagon news conference on the 44th day of US bombing, Rumsfeld also said the United States would not let Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar escape from Kandahar, his southern stronghold now under siege, even if opposition groups negotiated a deal with him for free passage.
Rumsfeld was asked about reports that Omar is trying to negotiate a handover of power in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban militia that has harbored bin Laden and his al-Qa'eda terrorist network.
( November 19, 2001)
