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UN Council Tells Afghanistan to Hand over Bin Laden
UN Security Council members told Afghanistan's Taliban rulers on Tuesday to surrender Saudi-born millionaire Osama bin Laden "immediately and unconditionally" as called for in council resolutions.
"There is one and only one message the Security Council has for the Taliban Implement United Nations Security Council resolutions, in particular Resolution 1333, immediately and unconditionally," French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte, this month's council president, said.
That resolution, adopted Dec. 19, imposed a second round of sanctions on the Taliban, including an arms embargo, in an unsuccessful effort to have them surrender bin Laden, under indictment in the United States for allegedly plotting the August 1998 bombings of two US Embassies in East Africa.
Washington now suspects bin Laden, living in Afghanistan as a "guest" of the Taliban, of heading a network of militants responsible for the Sept. 11 carnage in the United States.
The attacks by hijacked airliners pulverized the World Trade Center and demolished part of the Pentagon, left nearly 6,000 dead or missing and engendered a sense of insecurity unparalleled since the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
The council's statement came after a briefing from Kieran Prendergast, the UN undersecretary-general for political affairs, which included the "dire consequences of Taliban rule for the Afghan people," Levitte said.
In contrast, UN humanitarian and refugee officials are worried about any attack on Afghanistan, whose impoverished population is suffering from two decades of civil war and the worst drought in 30 years.
The 15-member Security Council, most of whose decisions are mandatory, reacted immediately last Wednesday with a resolution that condemned the attacks and called on the world to help find the perpetrators and those who sheltered them.
Chirac due at United Nations
Levitte, diplomats said, wanted a follow-up resolution for a global "anti-terrorism campaign" but then decided to delay it for a few weeks so concrete measures could be worked out.
French President Jacques Chirac, now in Washington for talks with US President George W. Bush, is meeting UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York on Wednesday.
"President Chirac, beyond his meeting with President Bush, wanted to have quiet talk with Kofi Annan," Levitte said.
"He also wants to meet the press in the UN building to show that, confronted with scourge of terrorism, the world has to act in unanimous way and the United Nations is the body where we can build a unanimous response," Levitte said.
Chirac had been scheduled to chair a Security Council meeting on children in war zones but a World Summit on Children for this week was canceled after the attacks.
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