The US Vice-President, Mr Dick Cheney, said yesterday the large advances which anti-Taliban forces have made in Afghanistan mark a "very good beginning to what's likely to be a long struggle", reports Paddy Smyth, Washington Correspondent.
The Defence Secretary, Mr Don Rumsfeld, visiting the site of the World Trade Centre in New York, said efforts continue to track down key Taliban rulers. "Some have been killed, others are hiding, and there are no particular reports of senior leadership having been located," Mr Rumsfeld said. He said US special forces are watching key roads in southern Afghanistan as Taliban militia forces flee southward.
"They have been interdicting the main roads that connect the north to the south to see what's going on and to stop people that they think ought to be stopped," Mr Rumsfeld said. "We still have a ways to go."
The Attorney General, Mr John Ashcroft, announced a radical reorganisation of the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS), splitting it between its service and enforcement functions. The service, which has been much criticised as a a leaky vessel which has allegedly allowed many potential terrorists to slip through its grasp will become "a better servant of our friends, and a greater obstacle to our enemies," Mr Ashcroft said. Some 500 million people cross the US borders every year.