US President George W Bush said on Saturday his country's covert war in Afghanistan in response to terror attacks was heating up, while US officials denied a report that Osama bin Laden's men had grabbed US commandos on a spying mission.
The Qatari-based Al-Jazeera television said that three US commandos and two US citizens of Afghan origin had been caught in southwest Afghanistan near the Iranian border carrying maps showing the base camps of bin Laden's Al-Qaeda group.
But a US administration official, who declined to be named, said "the report is innacurate".
The Qatari television station, which has had contacts with bin Laden in the past, insisted on the veracity of its story.
Al-Jazeera's correspondent in the Pakistani border city of Peshawar, Ahmad Zaidan, said in a live broadcast that "unimpeachable sources" who cited "a military official in Al-Qaeda" had announced the capture.
He said "three members of the US 'special forces' and two Afghans holding US citizenship were captured by the Al-Qaeda organization in Helman, near the border with Iran."
He added that pictures of the detainees would be published "soon."
For its part, Afghanistan's Taliban militia regime, which protects bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network, said it was not involved in any arrest of US personnel. And a spokesman for Pakistan's foreign ministry said that no US actions had been launched from Pakistani soil.
US and British officials have refused to publicly confirm persistent reports from US media that allied special forces are inside Afghanistan paving the way for a mission to snatch or slay bin Laden, but evidence suggests that US retaliation for September 11's terror attacks on US cities is close.
President Bush himself hinted in a radio address Saturday that action was being carried out in secret to hit back at bin Laden, the Saudi radical blamed for the September 11 suicide hijack attacks on New York and the Pentagon that left more than 6,000 people dead or missing.
"This war will be fought wherever terrorists hide, or run, or plan," he said. "Some victories will be won outside of public view, in tragedies avoided and threats eliminated. Other victories will be clear to all."
A number of US media, including CNN and ABC television, reported that anonymous American officials had confirmed that US and British special forces were scouting locations within Afghanistan ahead of possible attacks.
Elite US troops including the ultra-secret Delta Force, light infantry Rangers and tough Navy SEALs, along with the British Special Air Service (SAS), are reported to be operating out of bases in Pakistan and Central Asia.
Polls in US media outlets The Washington Post and Newsweek show Americans are overwhelmingly in favour of military strikes against "terrorist" groups and nations that support them. Bush's handling of events has also earned him the support of nearly nine in 10 Americans, Newsweek said.
The US president met Saturday with CIA chief George Tenet and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to discuss aspects of the multi-pronged strategy employing military, covert, legal and financial means.
The bid to form an international coalition around the US strategy was strengthened Friday when the UN Security Council unanimously voted for a resolution to punish terrorism's state sponsors. The resolution was passed after the Taliban refused an 11th hour ultimatum to hand over bin Laden.
Russia, which has pledged to support a US counterstrike, hailed it as a vote of "exceptional significance".
Pakistan, which had used its former status as the Taliban's strongest ally to push the failed demand for bin Laden, said diplomatic contacts with the Islamic regime would continue.
Washington and other governments fear that radicals linked with or sympathetic to bin Laden may carry out further deadly attacks -- perhaps with chemical or biological weapons -- and have launched a worldwide investigation to track down terror networks and detain suspects.
Europe is proving key to the probe.
Reports in Germany suggested the September 11 plot was hatched in the country and that suspects detained over a plan to bomb a British diplomatic mission in Hamburg had been in contact with Mohammed Atta, one of the 19 hijackers identified in the attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
Britain is also holding a 27-year-old Algerian man, a pilot, on a US-issued arrest warrant on suspicion he was a flight instructor for four of the hijackers.
And in Italy, anti-terrorist officers carried out searches in several cities late on Saturday aimed at people believed to be close to and supportive of fundamentalist Islamic groups operating overseas.
At the same time, thousands of demonstrators held protests in the United States, Italy, Spain and Greece against terrorism -- and against the United States' likely retaliatory strikes.
Another anti-war rally was planned for Sunday in Brighton, England.
Many of the peace protestors fear that military strikes in Afghanistan would unjustly hurt the country's already suffering population.
The United Nations has already warned of a looming humanitarian catastrophe there as a growing refugee crisis threatened to further destabilise the war-torn and drought-stricken region.
Some humanitarian shipments have resumed after being suspended in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, with a convoy carrying children's winter clothing, food supplements, medicine and blankets leaving northwestern Pakistan for Afghanistan, UN Children's Fund spokesman Gordon Weiss said.
There were concerns, too, inside Afghanistan over the fate of eight Western aid workers being held on charges of preaching Christianity. A trial hearing was set for Sunday after they met with their Pakistani defence lawyers.
Washington has demanded the release of the aid workers -- two Americans, two Australians and four Germans who were arrested along with 16 Afghan colleagues in early August, and whom Bush has said were "unjustly imprisoned".
Another Westerner, Yvonne Ridley, a British journalist for the Sunday Express newspaper, has also become a prisoner of the Taliban, the militia said on Saturday.
It said it had arrested her near the Pakistani border for illegally entering the country without a passport and dressed in an Afghan woman's burqa -- a cone-shaped all-covering garment. A Taliban diplomatic source said she could be tried for spying.
She, like the other eight prisoners, could face a maximum penalty of death under the Taliban's strict interpretation of Islamic law.
(Xinhua News Agency 10/02/2001)
