2 October 2001
Washington — The September 11 terrorist assaults will plunge another 10 million people into poverty next year as developing nations, many of them in Africa, take a battering, the World Bank said in a report yesterday.
"We have seen the human toll the recent attacks wrought in the US, with citizens from some 80 nations perishing in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania," said World Bank President James Wolfensohn.
Mr. Wolfensohn spoke even as the ABC News reported on its website yesterday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) may have foiled a terrorist attack on Chicago's Seas Tower, the tallest building in the United States.
The Taliban was also reported to have lowered its iron tight rule in three provinces in a dramatic move to quash growing support for ousted King Mohammad Zahir Shah.
Mr. Wolfensohn, the World Bank President in a statement in Washington D.C. said: "There is another human toll that is largely unseen and one that will be felt in all parts of the developing world, especially Africa.
"We estimate that tens of thousands more children will die worldwide and some 10 million more people are likely to be living below the poverty line of one dollar a day because of the terrorist attacks."
The World Bank's preliminary economic assessment was based only on expected loss of income, he said.
"Many, many more people will be thrown into poverty if development strategies are disrupted," Wolfensohn said.
The FBI may have foiled a terrorist attack on Chicago's Sears Tower, the tallest building in the United States, ABC News reported on its website yesterday..
The US network said the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) believed it may have thwarted the plans of another terrorist cell to target the 436-metre (1,454-foot) skyscraper based on the material in possession of five people arrested across the Mid-West last week.
During the arrest of three people in Detroit, one in Chicago and one in Iowa last week, FBI agents seized computer disks and drawings related to the landmark skyscraper.
Four of the five detained also had licences to drive trucks transporting hazardous materials, according to the network.
Some of the tower's 10,000 office workers returned uneasily to work after the September 11 attacks that are thought to have claimed more than 5,700 lives, fearing that the landmark could be the object of a similar attack.
The lofty tower was evacuated shortly after the early-morning atrocities and city authorities sent a bomb squad team to its downtown site after a hoax caller phoned emergency services 20 times in a period of nine hours, saying that a commercial jet carrying explosives was headed for the Sears.
The 29-year-old security guard, Roger Ryan, was charged with felony and misconduct by Cook County State's Attorney last week.
The FBI said it could not confirm the ABC report.
The Taliban's days in power appeared numbered yesterday as it loosened its iron tight rule in three provinces in a dramatic move to quash growing support for ousted King Mohammad Zahir Shah.
The militia's decision to share power with provincial elders followed an announcement in Rome that anti-Taliban opposition leaders had agreed to elect a transitional government with the popular ex-King as a figure-head.
A Taliban official quoted by the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press said the militia had decided to give tribal and community elders a role in governing the South-Eastern provinces of Khost, Paktika and Paktia.
"Tribal elders and Jihadi commanders or their representatives will be included in the government machinery," Rehmad Wahid Yar was quoted as saying.
The report is the first admission from the hardline Islamic militia of any cracks in their overwhelming power base in Afghanistan.
It is also first time the Taliban have agreed to any form of power sharing in their seven-year crusade to create a pure Islamic state.
In recent days there have been growing reports of local discontent over the Taliban's refusal to hand over the wanted Saudi-born dissident, Osama bin Laden - blamed for the September 11 suicide hijackings in the United States - and expel Arab extremists from the area.
The provinces are also traditionally moderate Pashtun areas, and home to past backers of the former king, but are also home to several known Arab extremist training camps.
Khost province was hit by US cruise missile strikes in 1998 after the twin US Embassy bombings in East Africa.
Asked if the regime's days were numbered, Pakistan's President, Pervez Musharraf said: "It appears so."
Although Pakistan - the only remaining country to have official links with the Taliban - had tried to convey the seriousness of the US threat to strike Afghanistan if it refused to turn over bin Laden, the mission appeared to have failed.
"It appears that because of the stand that the Taliban have taken that confrontation will take place," Musharraf told BBC World Service radio.
In another growing sign of their isolation, Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar told the nation in a rare radio address late Sunday that his followers would fight a guerrilla war if his "Islamic Emirate" is toppled from power.
"The (Taliban) government may collapse, but it will be the same as during the time of the jihad (against the Soviet Union). New fronts will be established, just like against the communists," Omar said in a broadcast on Taliban-run Radio Shariat.
"You may capture the airports and the capital and the cities, but people will go to the mountains. God willing, I believe that neither the US or their allies will be able to do anything. They will only find the same destiny as the communists."
His broadcast came shortly after the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said bin Laden was back under Taliban control, not missing as he claimed a week earlier.
But the militia's bravado looked increasingly hollow against the weight of international opposition being mobilised by the US-led war on terrorism.
Britain froze $88.4 million of assets linked to the Taliban regime on Monday, while French Defence Minister, Alain Richard said the destruction of the radical Islamic theocracy was a "profoundly legitimate objective."
On Sunday, White House Chief of Staff, Andrew Card said: "If they're going to continue to be a party to the terrorist acts, they should not be in power."
Omar also attacked Afghanistan's 86-year-old former king for talking with US congressman about forming an alliance with anti-Taliban factions.
"Afghans should not fulfil the interests of the United States. If you pay no attention to Islam and God's law, then your death will be allowed," the reclusive war veteran said.
Opposition leaders meeting in Rome under the auspices of the former king released a three-point statement Monday following more than two days of intensive negotiations aimed at agreeing on a post-Taliban administration.
The "Supreme Council for the National Unity of Afghanistan" would convene an emergency Loya Jirga, an assembly of traditional chiefs, "which will elect a head of state and transitional government," the statement said.
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