PETER COONEY, Washington, New York | Friday
AMERICANS prepared on Friday to commemorate the victims of the worst attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor, while the nation’s leaders studied options for military retaliation.
President George W. Bush, proclaiming a national day of prayer and remembrance for the thousands believed killed in Tuesday’s assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, was to attend a memorial service in Washington and then travel to New York to show support for that stricken city.
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the United States had yet to decide if Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks on Tuesday morning by hijacked airliners that destroyed New York’s World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon near Washington.
One senior official told reporters that more than one extremist organization might have been involved.
The leader of Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban movement, which shelters bin Laden, defended him on Friday against accusations he masterminded the attacks, saying neither bin Laden nor Afghanistan had the capacity to train the suicide pilots who crashed the hijacked aircraft into the US landmarks.
Rescuers in New York battled through a third night early on Friday to locate survivors in the hellish ruins of the World Trade Center.
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said the list of those missing from the attack that crumpled the 110-story twin towers in the heart of New York’s financial district totaled 4 763 people. The Defense Department said 126 people were missing at the Pentagon.
More than 2 300 people died in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, that forced America’s entry into the Second World War.
Congress was set to vote on Friday on a $40-billion emergency relief package after the White House and congressional leaders settled differences on the plan shortly after midnight.
Military aircraft patrolled the skies over major US cities after US airports reopened on Thursday.
Rumsfeld told ”Larry King Live” on CNN that ”we have called down” fighter aircraft and radar-equipped AWACS planes as commercial airliners returned to the air.
He said interceptor aircraft were on ”strip alert” across the nation, ready to scramble into the air within minutes if needed to protect US airspace. Under strip alert, planes must be airborne within 15 minutes of being called to action.
Officials said Rumsfeld was considering calling up thousands of military reservists to help maintain security and join active military units being prepared for possible retaliatory strikes.
Across a still jittery nation, numerous bomb threats forced evacuations of buildings, including the U.S. Capitol.
Vice President Dick Cheney was moved from the White House to the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland as a ”precautionary measure” to separate the nation’s two top leaders.
Congress neared agreement on a bipartisan resolution giving the president its approval to launch military strikes in retaliation for the attacks against the United States.
Bush, wiping tears from his eyes, vowed to ”whip terrorism” and pledged to wage ”the first war of the 21st century” against the militants suspected of being behind the attacks.
Retaliation options being mulled by US officials ranged from heavy bombing to elite troop strikes.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll released on Friday showed that nearly nine in 10 Americans approved of Bush’s job performance — a huge leap in the aftermath of Tuesday’s terror attacks.
Nearly seven out of 10 Americans supported military action against the groups or countries responsible for the attacks, even if that meant a long war with heavy US casualties, the poll found.
Officials said they had located the black box flight recorder from the airliner hijacked on Tuesday that crashed in rural Pennsylvania. Officials said they also believed they were zeroing in on the black box in the Pentagon wreckage.
Attorney General John Ashcroft told reporters that officials believed they had identified at least 18 hijackers, all of whom had tickets as passengers, who commandeered the four planes involved.
He added that the hijackers were believed to have a ”significant” number of associates who presumably were still at large.
Officials at New York’s Kennedy Airport — opened for business on Thursday after being closed for two days — arrested one person carrying false identification and detained ”five or six” others.
Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik told a news conference that some of those detained were Arabs and that the arrested man attempted to clear security with false identification and a pilot’s license.
The FAA grounded all US flights headed to New York-area airports due to ”FBI activity.”
Secretary of State Colin Powell became the first senior US official to identify bin Laden — an implacable foe of the United States — publicly as a suspect in Tuesday’s attacks.
Aides to bin Laden, accused of engineering attacks on US embassies in Africa in 1998 from his Afghanistan headquarters, told journalists in Pakistan that the shadowy leader denied involvement in this week’s carnage, which he described as ”punishment from almighty Allah.”
Pakistan said on Friday that it had not closed its border with Afghanistan but was conducting more effective checks on people trying to cross either way.
The statement came after some media reported that Washington had asked Islamabad to close the border. Pakistan is one of only three countries to recognize Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, which treats bin Laden as a ”guest” of the country.
In New York, residents of America’s largest city struggled to return to some semblance of normality.
Businesses reopened on Thursday, commuters returned, and the bond market resumed trading, although the stock market was closed for a third day and would not reopen until Monday.
Tokyo shares jumped early on Friday, but most global financial markets remained mired in uncertainty ahead of the reopening of US trading after Wall Street’s longest shutdown since the outbreak of the First World War. – Reuters