U.S. Tightens Net Around Taliban

The United States on Tuesday promised aid for the Northern Alliance, Afghanistan’s largest opposition force, and received pledges of help from four former Soviet republics across Afghanistan’s northern border in its military campaign against terrorism.

The developments ease some obstacles to a military operation, as well as raise the potential of local support in inhospitable territory far from any U.S. bases. The move to help fund the Northern Alliance is a key element in the multi-prong effort to foment internal dissent. U.S. officials would not say how much was being offered.

The four Central Asian nations expressed their support one day after Russia pledged help and limited participation in possible U.S. military action against Afghanistan. Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgystan pledged airspace for humanitarian deliveries and other assistance.

In another step that cheered American officials, Saudi Arabia announced early Tuesday that it had cut all ties with Afghanistan’s Taliban government. This leaves the regime in Kabul nearly isolated because only Pakistan holds diplomatic ties with it. President Bush said he was “most pleased” by the decision.

Later Tuesday, Saudi Arabia ordered the Taliban’s envoy out of the kingdom within two days, the Saudi Press Agency reported. Saudi Arabia said it acted only after the Taliban rejected all urgings “to stop harboring criminals and terrorists . . . and making its land a refuge and haven for them.” By doing so, the Taliban was “defaming Islam and defaming Muslims’ reputation in the world,” the Saudi government said.

As pressure mounted on the Taliban, which rules most of Afghanistan, Bush said he was not interested in “nation-building,” meaning taking the pieces of a shattered government and reassembling them more to the liking of the United States.

But White House officials were unclear about what the administration expected to occur if control there is wrested from the fundamentalist Muslim leadership.

A U.S. Embassy official in Italy, charge d’affaires William Pope, met near Rome with the former king of Afghanistan, Mohammed Zahir Shah, who is in his late 80s. He was driven from power in 1973, and has told a Turkish newspaper he is ready to return to Afghanistan if his presence could resolve the crisis.

Bush, meanwhile, sought to explain the U.S. posture toward the Afghan people. “We have no issue and no anger toward the citizens of Afghanistan,” he said, adding that the best way to rout the terrorists harbored there was to gain the support of citizens “who may be tired of having the Taliban in place, or tired of having Osama bin Laden, people from foreign soils, in their own land, willing to finance this repressive government.”

On the military front, the Pentagon announced additional calls for U.S. reserves, ordering nearly 2,000 more troops to duty--on top of the 10,000 already summoned on the way to as many as 35,000.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld refused to say he would not resort to exercising the military draft--an unlikely step--as he avoided ruling out any option. He predicted a long struggle. “It will be difficult. It will be dangerous,” he said to reporters.

Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell spent 2 1/2 hours delivering secret briefings to members of Congress. The Pentagon renamed the military campaign Operation Enduring Freedom. The first designation it had picked, Infinite Justice, was seen as skirting too close to religious sensitivities, particularly those of Muslims, because it suggested treading on a deity’s role in dispensing ultimate judgment.

Two weeks after four hijackings killed more than 6,000 people, destroyed the World Trade Center in New York and a swath of the Pentagon, setting the nation on a warlike footing, Bush again presented the growing campaign as a choice between good and evil.

Speaking to FBI employees after touring their operations center, the president said:

“I see things this way: The people who did this act on America, and who may be planning further acts, are evil people. They don’t represent an ideology, they don’t represent a legitimate political group of people. They’re flat evil. That’s all they can think about, is evil.”

“As a nation of good folks, we’re going to hunt them down, and we’re going to find them, and we will bring them to justice,” he said.

Bush met at midday with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who said Japan would not take part directly in military operations, strictly adhering to the terms of its U.S.-drafted post-World War II constitution blocking any foreign military role.

But, Bush said, Koizumi has offered $40 million in humanitarian assistance to Pakistan, already seeing a huge flow of refugees toward its northern border with Afghanistan.

Although the U.S. welcomed the support of the four former Soviet republics, a major holdout remains: Uzbekistan. It is the United States’ most critical link in the region because it has several air bases near the border with Afghanistan that could be valuable staging grounds for U.S. airstrikes. President Islam Karimov has made no statement on their use since Sept. 19, when he said he had not been approached by U.S. officials.

“The events are just starting to unfold,” government spokesman Sherzot Kudratkhodzhayev said by telephone Tuesday from the Uzbek capital, Tashkent. “And it would be wrong to make hasty decisions.”

Experts say that in return for use of its air bases, Uzbekistan is probably asking the United States for assistance in combating its own Islamic insurgents and dealing with likely flows of Afghan refugees over its border.

The two other Central Asian nations that border Afghanistan directly--Tajikistan and Turkmenistan--are less hospitable territory for U.S. troops. Tajikistan is politically fragile and already hosts 10,000 Russian soldiers.

Turkmenistan is a politically isolated totalitarian state that has maintained a studied neutrality toward the Taliban. Experts say Turkmenistan’s border with Afghanistan is poorly guarded and it fears influxes of fighters and refugees. Turkmenistan is also not a member of the Russia-led security alliance.

In footage broadcast on state television late Monday, Turkmenistan President Saparmurad A. Niyazov said his country would stick with its policy of neutrality toward Afghanistan. Nonetheless, Niyazov said he would permit flights of humanitarian aid over the country.

“We in Turkmenistan have never been involved [in Afghanistan] and won’t interfere further,” Niyazov said, according to an English transcript of the Turkmen-language broadcast. “We have a long border with Afghanistan. . . . Our people can peacefully sleep, because we don’t wish sufferings for Afghani people, we don’t wish Afghan people to live in wars and bloodshed. We’ll be happy if Bin Laden or whoever committed this crime will be judged through negotiations without Afghani people suffering.”

Also Tuesday, the Philippines offered to allow U.S. planes and ships to use two former American military bases there--the former Clark Air Force Base and a Navy base at Subic Bay. Although they are about 3,500 miles from Afghanistan, they would be welcome support because the only facility in that part of the world to which the United States has free access is a British base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.

The Philippines dispatched former Foreign Minister Roberto Romulo to Washington, he said in an interview with The Times, “to convey the message of all-out support,” from medicine and medical facilities to the use of the port and former air base for transit and staging.

The U.S. abandoned both huge facilities 10 years ago at a time when rising Philippine nationalism made American forces unwelcome. Since the U.S. departure, both bases have been converted to civilian use. But the runways remain intact.

White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer announced, meanwhile, that Bush would fly to Chicago on Thursday for a quick stop at O’Hare International Airport to boost the spirits of airline workers and show support for their struggling industry.

Since Sept. 11, Bush has stayed close to Washington.

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Times staff writers Norman Kempster in Washington, Maura Reynolds in Moscow and Richard C. Paddock in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.