Osama bin Laden has issued a letter urging Pakistani Muslims to defend Islam against what he described as a Christian crusade, according to a report on the Arab al-Jazeera satellite television. The station showed a picture of the letter, hand-written in Arabic, which it said was signed by the Saudi-born bin Laden.
"Osama bin Laden called on Muslims in Pakistan to stand in the face of what he called a Christian crusade against Islam," the letter said. "Muslims in Afghanistan are being subjected to killing and the Pakistani government is standing beneath the Christian banner."
The Qatar-based channel did not show the brief letter in full, although extracts could be read from the image displayed on television. It said: "The crusader war against Islam has intensified ... The world is split into two. Part of it is under the head of infidels [President] Bush, and the other half under the banner of Islam. Standing against wrong will strengthen us." The channel has become the main conduit for statements by bin Laden. It showed footage of bin Laden making a statement immediately after the first US air strikes on October 7th, in which he praised the hijacked aircraft attacks on the US.
The Taliban, meanwhile, claimed to have shot down an unidentified US plane and said they had foiled an attempt by four US helicopters to rescue Mr Hamid Karzai, a close aide of ex-King Zahir Shah. The helicopters were involved in a clash with Taliban troops in the south, according to the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press. The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Mr Abdul Salam Zaeef, said Taliban troops raided a Karzai hideout and killed four supporters of the ex-king.
Meanwhile, the Pakistan government has arrested the head of a leading political party after his movement said it would join Islamic groups protesting against the government's pro-US policies.
Mr Mukhdoom Javed Hashmi, who was arrested in Islamabad, is acting president of the Pakistan Muslim League, the country's leading party before a military coup brought Gen Perez Musharraf to power two years ago.
The religious parties are organising a strike against the government next Friday.
In a vigorous defence of the pace of the US military campaign to date, the US Secretary of Defence, Mr Don Rumsfeld, reminded the American people that on only the 25th day of military action "smoke is still rising from the World Trade Centre."
Responding to criticism from right-wing columnists that the US is pulling its punches and becoming bogged down, Mr Rumsfeld said the US had taken four months to respond to Pearl Harbour with a bombing attack on Japan, and eight months before it engaged it in a ground war. The US had bombed Japan for 3 1/2 years, he said, while on the European front bombing had continued for five years. And the attacks on the World Trade Centre had taken two years to plan, he argued.
Mr Rumsfeld said the US will soon put more elite troops on the ground in Afghanistan, sharply increasing bomb targeting and other support for anti-Taliban forces. "We have a number of teams cocked and ready to go," he said.
The campaign continued yesterday as jets continued to pound positions around Maszar-e-Sharif where the Northern Alliance was reported to be reinforcing its positions.
Brig-Gen Dick Myers, chairman of the joint chiefs, said that 55 aircraft targeted eight sites on Wednesday, focusing on bases, tunnels, bunkers and troop concentrations near Mazar-e-Sharif, Kandahar and Kabul.
As New York investigators still professed bewilderment at the anthrax death of a woman on Wednesday, there were new reports of contamination. Two hundred workers were being offered drugs following positive tests at a Kansas City, Missouri, postal facility, the first contamination in the mid-west, while four mailrooms at US Food and Drug Administration buildings in Rockville, Maryland, have tested positive in preliminary tests.
Meanwhile, a flight from Reagan National Airport in Washington was diverted and escorted into Detroit by military jets after a passenger discovered a note containing a bomb threat. The note was found in a magazine tucked into one of the seats of the Airbus A320, but nothing was found when the plane was searched.