The US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, yesterday downplayed talk of targeting Iraq in the near future. Speaking to reporters at the State Department Mr Powell dismissed media speculation that President Bush had shifted his focus to Iraq.
"I don't know what people think is about to happen," he said. "This sort of suggestion out of the media right now that something is on the verge of happening has no particular underpinning substance to it," he added.
He was responding to a question about a fall in Turkish stock and currency markets on fears that US strikes on Afghanistan might spread to Turkey's neighbour Iraq. Mr Powell is due to travel to Turkey next week.
Asked whether Turkey would be crucial to any military campaign against Iraq, Powell said: "The President has all of his options with respect to what he might do to deal with the Iraqi danger to the region. But I think it is highly inappropriate, speculative and hypothetical of me to talk about a war that nobody has declared."
He made clear the Iraqi president could not rest easy however, saying: "We are keeping an eye on Saddam Hussein. He develops weapons of mass destruction." Briefing journalists at the Pentagon the Defence Department's spokeswoman, Ms Victoria Clarke, strongly denied reports that a group of 160 prisoners had been executed by Afghan opposition forces. The reports which had been carefully checked with US sources on the ground were "just not believable", she said.
At the briefing Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem described the Taliban forces around Kandahar as "fractured" with some units losing contact with their commanders. Some of those units were surrendering, he said, others were involved actively in negotiations with opposition forces, while yet other units were digging in for a fight. He denied reports suggesting the US was concerned about Russian troops in Kabul.
Meanwhile, White House sources are predicting that Mr Bush is about to make a strong speech defending emergency powers in the face of growing Democratic and Congressional criticism of his proposals to use military tribunals to try terrorism suspects. Mr Bush yesterday told Congressional leaders who raised the issue with him that al Qaeda had in the past learned a huge amount about US investigative methods from the public trials of its members.
An opinion poll conducted by the Washington Post and ABC News has shown strong support for controversial special measures to try non-citizens suspected of involvement in terrorism in special military tribunals.
Six out of 10 respondents back the idea while 73 per cent support the wiretapping of lawyers' contacts with their suspected terrorist clients. Ninety four per cent believe that US action in Afghanistan is going either fairly or very well, with the numbers saying it is going very well doubling in the last two weeks. Nearly eight out of 10 would also back an expansion of the war to include military action to topple Saddam Hussein.
The Attorney General, Mr John Ashcroft, announced a new programme under which foreigners who give the US government useful information about terrorists could be put on a fast track to American citizenship.
The "responsible co-operators programme" would defer deportation indefinitely for illegal aliens who qualify.
The UN Security Council voted unanimously yesterday for a US-Russian compromise resolution that pledges to revise sanctions against Iraq within six months and extends the existing UN "oil-for-food" program for Baghdad until then.
