US Afghan mission an 'engaged shooting war' until al-Qaeda falls

The war and the US mission in Afghanistan is far from over and the US will remain there until al-Qaeda and its leadership has been brought to justice, President Bush's spokesman, Mr Ari Fleischer, has said.

"The war remains an engaged shooting war," he said yesterday, insisting that the President remains focused on Afghanistan.

He refused to be drawn on whether Iraq was next on his target list, as some of the more hawkish members of the administration wish, but gave a general warning against those who engaged in terrorism or protected them.

The Irish Times has learned, however, that privately Mr Bush has been critical of the State Department and its "Arabists", even telling a small group of US Jewish leaders last week that he was going to bypass them.

Reports of the conversation, which took place when the group came to the White House last Monday to mark Hanukkah, appeared last week in the Israeli press and were denied by Mr Fleischer on Friday as "garbage".

A National Security Council source confirmed that Mr Bush did make the comments, specifically about the Arab-Israeli conflict but reflecting the influence of his National Security Adviser, Dr Condoleezza Rice, who is increasingly pitting herself against the policy line of the Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell.

The central concern of the "Arabists" in the State Department has been the preservation of the coalition built by Mr Powell and which they regard as threatened both by talk of attacks on Iraq and by the US's uncritical support for Israeli action against the Palestinians.

A few weeks ago, 20 former US ambassadors to Arab countries signed a letter warning of the dangers. The New York Times on Friday also reported on the same meeting with Jewish leaders, insisting that Mr Bush was particularly blunt about blaming the Palestinian leader, Mr Yasser Arafat, for the present crisis.

The paper says Mr Bush was quoted by one participant as saying: "Arafat criticised us, he urged us to put more pressure on Israel. Who is he kidding? Now is his time. The spotlight is on Arafat. Performance is the key."

Mr Bush is said to have made clear in the 45-minute meeting that the US was pushing its European allies to pressure Mr Arafat to crack down. One participant in the meeting quoted Mr Bush as saying that the US must keep its European allies buoyed, and that "they have a tendency to wilt," the Times said.

At a briefing in the Pentagon yesterday, Admiral John Stufflebeem admitted that the US was confident, from a number of intelligence sources, that Osama bin Laden was in the Tora Bora in the last few days but now his whereabouts was "anybody's guess".

He confirmed that the US was now holding five captured non-Afghan, Taliban or al-Qaeda fighters on the USS Peleliu in the Arabian Sea. They include a US citizen, Mr John Walker (20), who is likely to face trial in the US courts, possibly for treason which can carry the death penalty.

While the Mayor of New York, Mr Rudy Giuliani, has said Mr Walker should face the death penalty if found guilty of treason - a difficult charge to prove in US law - others have expressed concern at whether the use of evidence gathered from him under interrogation shortly after he was discovered in the prison in Mazar-e-Sharif may violate his right to protection from self-incrimination.

Mr Walker will be represented by a well-known Irish-American defence lawyer from San Francisco, Mr Jim Brosnahan. Mr Brosnahan, whose family is from Kerry, has been successful in a number of high-profile cases, including a reversal of the decision to extradite Maze escaper Kevin Barry Artt.

The imprisoned group also includes the Australian citizen Mr David Hicks, also a convert to Islam, who was fighting with the Taliban. The four non-US citizens may be tried in US military tribunals, although Mr Fleischer said the President had yet to make a decision. Mr Bush would decide how prisoners were treated legally on a "case-by-case" basis, Mr Fleischer said.