U.S. Is Pushing to Open Bridge

Trying to stave off a growing humanitarian crisis, the U.S. is pressing Uzbekistan to reopen a long-closed bridge that the Pentagon hopes to use to move food and medical supplies to starving Afghans, senior defense officials said Sunday.

In meetings in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told officials of the former Soviet republic Sunday that opening the Friendship Bridge would allow tons of humanitarian aid to reach desperately poor refugees.

The bridge spans the Uzbek-Afghan border about 20 miles north of Mazar-i-Sharif, the key crossroads city in northern Afghanistan. It has been closed by Uzbekistan for three years, since Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban took control of the Afghan side. Conceivably, it could also be used to supply anti-Taliban forces if they were to seize the territory at the border.

But Uzbek officials told Rumsfeld that as long as the Taliban controls the Afghan side, the bridge will remain sealed.

“Is this important? Let me put it this way,” said a senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It’s 18 to 20 miles north of Mazar-i-Sharif, and from a humanitarian perspective, you can move tons and tons across a bridge.”

Uzbek officials did not speak publicly about the bridge negotiations. But another senior U.S. defense official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Uzbeks, already receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. economic assistance, “know it is in their best interest to do this.”

“They’re working on it. They really want this to happen,” the official said.

The request to Uzbekistan came as the American bombing of Afghanistan continued for a 29th day. U.S. jets reportedly struck the front line about 30 miles north of the capital, Kabul, as well as the city itself.

At the same time, the Pentagon was confronting the onset of winter in the region. Severe weather has covered the Hindu Kush mountains with a thick blanket of snow and has complicated efforts to route aid to impoverished Afghans.

“It’s no walk in the park,” said Rumsfeld, glancing out the window of his military transport plane as it briefly flew over the steep, snow-covered mountains of Afghanistan.

“There is an urgency” to the aid efforts, said Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke, who was accompanying Rumsfeld. “I mean, look out the window right now.”

Rumsfeld was on the second leg of a whirlwind trip to Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and India to shore up support for the U.S.-led war on terrorist networks and Taliban forces.

Rumsfeld flew from Washington to Moscow on Friday in the well-appointed military passenger jet he customarily uses. But on his visits to the countries bordering Afghanistan, he flew in a massive C-17 cargo plane loaded with equipment designed to repel heat-seeking missiles. The plane flew for about 10 minutes Sunday in Afghan airspace, crossing the country at its narrowest point on the way from Uzbekistan to Pakistan. The plane flew 39,000 feet above sea level, far too high to be in danger from enemy fire.

Plane Takes No Chances Coming Into Pakistan

On the way into Chakala air base in Pakistan, the Air Force crew flying the plane took no chances. They made what the Air Force calls a tactical landing, plunging from 18,000 feet to 1,000 feet in one minute and rocking back and forth on the way down to limit the craft’s exposure to potential enemy fire. A U.S. helicopter was shot at over Pakistan two weeks ago.

U.S. relations with Afghanistan’s Central Asian and other neighbors are complicated by local sensitivities and the authoritarian nature of the regimes that govern the nations. Uzbekistan has cracked down on observant Muslims in an effort to curb the influence of Islamic militants it blames for a cluster of car bomb attacks in Tashkent in 1999.

Rumsfeld traveled to Pakistan later Sunday, on his first visit to the Muslim-dominated nation, to meet with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and other senior officials. In remarks to reporters after the meetings, Foreign Minister Abdus Sattar minimized differences between his country and the U.S. over whether the bombing of Afghanistan should proceed during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins in mid-November. But he did emphasize Pakistan’s desire to see the U.S. campaign end as soon as it can.

“The military campaign should be reduced to a time as short as possible consistent with the resolution of objectives,” Sattar said.

Pakistan dropped its support for the Taliban under U.S. pressure and has allowed Washington use of its airspace and several military bases. But Musharraf, who came to power in a bloodless coup in 1999, is beleaguered at home. His political foes have called on the army to remove him from power if he does not withdraw support for the U.S.

America is putting together a package of military and economic assistance for Musharraf’s government, senior Bush administration officials said. The officials expressed confidence in the general’s hold on power.

Rumsfeld repeated his assertion of recent days that the U.S. cannot afford to cease bombing while the Taliban and leaders of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network are still at large.

“It is an issue all of us must be sensitive to,” Rumsfeld said of Muslim concerns about fighting during Ramadan. “But the reality is that the threat of additional terrorist attacks [is] there. . . . Terrorists must be stopped.”

Rumsfeld told Musharraf that the U.S. remains committed to the war, one senior defense official said.

“There’s no doubt from our side that we’re in it for the long term, no matter how long it takes,” the official said.

In Uzbekistan, after meeting with President Islam Karimov, Rumsfeld said he was satisfied with the current level of cooperation from the country, where about 1,000 troops from the Army’s 10th Mountain Division have been using an air base in Khanabad, about 130 miles from the Afghan border.

Uzbek Defense Minister Kodir Ghulomov said he expects cooperation between the two countries to move to “higher levels,” possibly including military aid. Uzbekistan not only fears incursions by the Taliban across its border but is concerned about a home-grown Islamic insurgency in the country’s northeast that it says is supported by the Taliban.

“We did not hold talks with Secretary Rumsfeld about significant changes in [our] cooperation,” Ghulomov told a news conference. “But at the same time, I’m certain that the developing cooperation will be characterized by higher levels, and the form of the [military] assistance may change accordingly.”

Ghulomov’s comments were the first time an Uzbek official had acknowledged publicly that U.S. troops are stationed in Khanabad.

“I think they haven’t talked about it before now because they are afraid of our population’s reaction,” said an Uzbek government official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I think maybe 90% support this operation. We are not Pakistan.”

Russians Doubt U.S. Motives

Nonetheless, public backing for the U.S. action in the countries of the former Soviet Union seems to be provisional at best. Opinion polls in Russia, for instance, have shown general sympathy for the U.S. position but also a deep suspicion that America has ulterior motives in the region.

“The Russian elite is very much split over what [Russian President Vladimir V.] Putin is doing” by cooperating with the United States, military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer said in Moscow. “There are a lot of mutterings about how the Kremlin is being occupied by the Americans.”

In Uzbekistan, human rights activists worry that by working with the Karimov regime, the United States may appear to endorse his government’s repressive policies.

But a senior U.S. defense official told journalists that what the United States hopes to do in Uzbekistan is demonstrate exemplary human rights behavior.

“We feel very strongly that military-to-military contacts can actually help increase our leverage at getting a better human rights record,” the official said. “It helps to inculcate, I don’t want to say American values, but it at least helps to inculcate the idea that there’s more than a brute-force way of getting things done.”

In India, Rumsfeld defended the effectiveness of the U.S. bombing campaign.

Standing next to Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes, who Sunday called the U.S. campaign “a waste of explosives on barren mountains,” Rumsfeld said the effectiveness of the bombing “is improving every day.”

On Sunday, Fernandes had told a German newsmagazine, “The most it will do is melt the ice on the peaks earlier than usual.”

But today, Fernandes declined to criticize the campaign. “It is military men who make the military tactics,” Fernandes said. “One should accept what is happening.”

Rumsfeld was scheduled to return to Washington late tonight after his meetings in New Delhi with Fernandes, President Kocheril Raman Narayanan and other top officials.

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Schrader reported from Tashkent; Islamabad, Pakistan; and New Delhi and Reynolds from Tashkent.