Johannesburg | Sunday
ACCORDING to a survey conducted by United States broadcaster CBS and the New York Times, a majority of Americans seem willing to impose on others sufferings very similar to those they have so recently endured themselves.
The poll indicates that 68% of Americans are prepared to see innocent people killed in any actions taken in retaliation for the attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon.
67% are prepared to go to war with a nation harbouring those responsible, and 60% will support retaliatory attacks even if it means that ”many thousands of innocent civilians are killed.”
An informal, unscientific poll on CNN currently shows that 70% of 63_000 respondents would be prepared to change US law to allow the assassination of ”hostile foreign leaders”.
Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden on Sunday denied any involvement in last week’s terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
”The US is pointing the finger at me but I categorically state that I have not done this,” bin Laden said in a statement sent to the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency. Liberation fighters have no need to attack civilians, President Thabo Mbeki declared on Sunday, recalling the ”moral” war against South Africa’s apartheid regime.
”Even as our enemy and its friends denounced our movement as terrorist, we took strict measures to avoid the use of terror against the people,” Mbeki writes in a letter due to be posted this week on the African National Congress (ANC) Internet site in reaction to the attacks on the United States.
”Our movement insisted that to resort to terrorism would be to dishonour our struggle and to destroy its morality,” he says.
Mbeki writes that the ANC opposed attacks on so-called soft targets but accuses the white rulers of the time of having no hesitation in resorting to terrorism to entrench their minority regime.
He also calls for the restoration of the rights of the Palestinians.
Nelson Mandela, who became South Africa’s first black president with the end of apartheid in 1994, meanwhile urged the United States to show caution.
”The United States must avoid any course of action which will be as unpopular as that of the terrorists,” he said on a visit to Kimberley.
”The United States’ response must not be allowed now to raise or to intensify, hatred against the Arab nations and the Muslims.
”The countries, both the masterminds and those who have executed this action, must be accurately identified and punished, most severely.” Egyptian Foreign Minster Ahmed Maher said on Saturday his country is cooperating with the US in the investigation in the September 11 attacks on the US, on a condolence visit to the US embassy here.
According to investigation documents, one of a team of suspected plane hijackers who steered passenger jets into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, Mohamed Atta, was born in Egypt.
”There is cooperation between Egypt and the United States in the inquiry underway,” Maher told reporters at the US embassy, adding that there had been ”an exchange of information.”
Maher said he had thanked US President George W. Bush for having reacted swiftly to xenophobic incidents against Arabs and Muslims in the United States in the wake of the attacks, in which Arab Muslims are implicated.
Bush said Thursday that Americans ”must be mindful that as we seek to win the war that we treat Arab Americans and Muslims with the respect they deserve.”
But Maher accused Israel on Saturday of exploiting the aftermath of attacks on the United States to block moves towards peace with the Palestinians.
”It is clear from the statements made by the Israeli Prime Minister (Ariel Sharon) since the attacks on New York and Washington that he wants to exploit the situation by any means to avoid any progress,” Maher told reporters.
The Egyptian minister warned Israel on Wednesday not to ”complicate the situation” by stepping up attacks on the Palestinians.
Maher said that Sharon’s remarks comparing Arafat with Osama bin Laden, the US’s prime suspect in the September 11 attacks, were ”part of his attempt to block (peace moves) and part of his erroneous policies.” Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood said Saturday that all Arabs and Muslims would support the extradition of Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan to the United States if his involvement in the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington is established.
But Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Maamun al-Hodeibi said the United States would be committing a ”terrorist act” if it launches strikes on targets in Afghanistan without proof that bin Laden was involved in attacks on the US. — DM&G reporter, Sapa, AFP
FEATURES:
Shattered World: A Daily Mail & Guardian special on the attack on the US
OFF-SITE:
The Guardian’s special report on the attacks