U.S. Widens Its Financial Terror List

President Bush stepped up the financial war on terrorism Thursday as he moved to choke off global funding to two groups and three individuals accused of backing the suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks on America.

The president announced his latest “strikes” in the Rose Garden on a blustery afternoon as he delivered an upbeat, 100-day progress report on the U.S.-led international campaign against terrorism.

“We and our coalition have done much in the past hundred days. With the help of freedom-loving countries around the world, we will do much more to rid the world of evil and of terrorists,” Bush vowed.

Meanwhile, more British peacekeepers flew into Afghanistan as the United Nations approved their mission to help the nation heal after decades of war. Fifty-three British Royal Marines landed at Bagram air base north of Kabul, joining others who will form an initial contingent of up to 200 peacekeepers moving into the capital ahead of Saturday’s inauguration of an interim administration.

The force, which will eventually number 3,000 to 5,000, was authorized by the U.N. to take military action as it helps keep security, and the head of the incoming government, Hamid Karzai, has welcomed a powerful role for the international troops.

But interim Defense Minister Mohammed Qassim Fahim, reflecting an unease over the presence of foreign forces and their involvement in factional feuds, insisted that they will have no authority to disarm belligerents, interfere in Afghan affairs or use force.

100 Hurt as Bomb Rocks Mazar-i-Sharif

The dangers in the strife-torn country were brought into sharp focus by an afternoon explosion in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, where a fragmentation grenade ripped through a market, wounding 100 people.

In Pakistan, the military recaptured a dozen Al Qaeda fighters who had escaped their guards the day before. The fighters were corralled by Pakistani troops after trying to flee Tora Bora, across the border in Afghanistan, but they overcame their captors amid a deadly gun battle. Up to seven fugitives remained at large.

At the White House, one of the organizations targeted by Bush was UTN, or Ummah Tameer-e-Nau, and three of its directors. A nongovernmental organization, UTN was founded last year by Bashiruddin Mehmood, former director for nuclear power at the Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission.

UTN claims to serve the hungry and needy in Afghanistan but in fact has provided information about nuclear, chemical and biological weapons to Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network, according to Bush. Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill said the group’s officials did so even after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, traveling to Afghanistan to meet with Bin Laden, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and others.

UTN is linked to the Wafa Humanitarian Organization and Al Rashid Trust, two nongovernmental groups the administration has previously tied to Al Qaeda, according to a background paper issued Thursday by the White House.

Besides Mehmood, Bush named two other UTN directors: Abdul Majeed, a onetime top official with the atomic energy agency, and S.M. Tufail, an industrialist.

The president also singled out LET, or Lashkar-e-Taiba, calling it a “stateless sponsor of terrorism” based in Kashmir, the much-fought-over territory claimed by both India and Pakistan. Bush blamed the group’s members for last week’s suicide attack on India’s Parliament in New Delhi--an assault that has inflamed tensions in the region.

LET is the armed wing of a religious organization based near Lahore, Pakistan, and is considered the best-trained group fighting in Kashmir, according to the administration.

The group allegedly collects donations from Pakistanis in the Persian Gulf, Britain and elsewhere and has conducted numerous operations against Indian troops and civilians since 1993, while seeking to undermine the government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

Although O’Neill conceded that neither UTN nor LET is believed to have assets in the United States, “we are putting the world on alert that these terrorists must not have access to finances anywhere.”

Both Bush’s remarks and his administration’s progress report clearly were designed to emphasize that the counter-terrorism campaign is righteous and global.

Progress Report Notes Allies’ Assistance

The report is a compendium of previously known actions taken by the Bush administration and, to a lesser extent, by allies around the world. It was prepared by the Coalition Information Center, which has offices at the White House compound, in London and in Islamabad, Pakistan.

The report notes that Bush has met with more than 51 world leaders and that more than 136 nations have offered a “diverse range of military assistance.” For instance, it says, 76 countries have granted landing rights to U.S. military aircraft and 23 countries have agreed to host U.S. troops in offensive operations.

The report says that coalition forces have destroyed at least 11 terrorist training camps and 39 Taliban command-and-control centers in Afghanistan. It says that 142 countries have acted to freeze the financial assets of terrorist organizations, with the U.S. accounting for half the $66 million blocked so far. Domestically, the assets of 153 such organizations and individuals have been frozen.

At the same time, Bush said, the U.S. since October has provided more than $187 million in assistance to Afghanistan, including 2.5 million packages of rations that have been dropped from aircraft.