JESSE JACKSON: TALIBAN WANTS TO MEET WITH ME

Jackson: Taliban Wants to Meet With Me

Wednesday, September 26, 2001

The Rev. Jesse Jackson says he received a call from Taliban representatives Wednesday inviting him to lead a "peace delegation" to the region.

The civil rights activist says he has not decided if he will accept the offer from the fundamentalist Islamic regime that has been harboring indicted terrorist Usama bin Laden. He has meetings Wednesday with the Pakistani ambassador and others and said that he would not be able to leave to meet with the Taliban on Wednesday.

Jackson suggested he is open to making the trip if his involvement could prevent the deaths of innocent Afghan civilians during a U.S. military campaign against terrorism.

"We must weigh what this invitation means. We're not going to be precipitous," Jackson said. "If we can do something to encourage them to dismantle those terrorist bases, to choose to hand over the suspects and release the Christians rather than engage in a long bloody war, we'll encourage them to do so."

Jackson said the message from a Taliban spokesman said that "war and bloodshed are easy but peace is difficult" as it extended an invitation for Jackson to bring a delegation to meet with them.

He said he received the invitation to go to Pakistan in a telegram Wednesday from Mohammed Sohail Shaheen, a spokesman at the Taliban's embassy in Islamabad. The hard-line Islamic Taliban movement controls much of Afghanistan; Pakistan is the only remaining nation that recognizes them as the government of the Central Asian country.

"I hope [the Taliban] choose an international court of world justice over world war," Jackson said.

Jackson said he spoke with Secretary of State Colin Powell, who repeated the Bush administration position that it will not negotiate with the Taliban but did not urge Jackson not to go.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer declined to comment. "I would just reiterate what the president has said, that he will not engage in any negotiations or discussions" with the Taliban, Fleischer said.

"Either the Taliban government is going to stand alone and take on this world pressure, or they are going to look for some graceful way out," Jackson said. "I hope that appealing to a peace delegation could be a bridge."

The Bush administration has called bin Laden, harbored by Afghanistan since 1996, the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington that left nearly 7,000 people presumed dead.

The United States has demanded that the Taliban hand over bin Laden and the top lieutenants in his Al Qaeda terrorist network, and extinguish the terrorist training camps in their country.

"We would like to see this situation resolved in a way that preserves the dignity and integrity of all sides ... in the interest of avoiding the humanitarian catastrophe that would befall the people of Afghanistan as a result of military strikes," Jackson quoted the telegram as saying.

Jackson was also quick to praise President Bush's decisions in the days since the attacks on Sept. 11, saying that Bush has been "presidential" in using "restraint" in his pursuit of war on terrorists.

Jackson's most recent foray into the field of international political tension was earlier this year, when he traveled to China in an effort to secure the release of 24 crew members of a Navy reconnaissance plane being held after their aircraft crashed.

Before that, he traveled to Yugoslavia in 1999 to secure the release of three American soldiers captured during the conflict over Kosovo. As he has on most of these trips, he traveled without the blessing of the administration in Washington.

Jackson also inserted himself into George H. W. Bush's conflict with Iraq by traveling to Baghdad in 1990, before the Gulf War, to ferry out 47 civilians seized by Saddam Hussein shortly after he invaded Kuwait. And in 1984, he flew to Syria to bring Navy pilot Robert Goodman out after he was shot down over Lebanon.

Fox News' Rita Cosby and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

FEDS MOCK JESSE ‘PEACE' BID

September 28, 2001
By DEBORAH ORIN

WASHINGTON - President Bush's team yesterday sent a blunt message to Jesse Jackson: You're on your own if you go to Afghanistan.

Jackson claims the Taliban's rulers invited him to mediate - but a Taliban official said that Jackson invited himself.

"He's free to travel . . . I don't know what purpose would be served," Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters.

Powell's top aide, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, suggested the Taliban is using Jackson to stall for time on Bush's demand that they turn over bin Laden and his henchmen.

"We're not interested in a dialogue. We're interested in action and no negotiation," Armitage told NBC's "Today" show.

Asked if Jackson should go, Armitage replied: "I don't think it's my decision."

Both Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, contacted by Jackson, have told him Bush's demands are clear without any need for outside help, officials said.

Jackson has called on the Taliban to use the "international court option" regarding bin Laden - but that conflicts with Bush's demand that the terror kingpin be turned over to U.S. authorities.

Jackson put out a press release Wednesday, saying he'd gotten a "formal invitation" to "lead a peaceful delegation" to meet with the Taliban. Jackson said he was mulling it but, "I really don't want to go."

But the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said that's not what happened: "We have not invited him, but he offered to mediate and our leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, has accepted this offer."

Jackson said he'd also gotten an appeal for help from the parents of two American women jailed in Afghanistan on charges of preaching Christianity.

"It's not about negotiations," Jackson told reporters, adding that the Taliban should free the women because "there's no useful purpose in using them as trophies."

Jackson has had some successes in freeing Americans held overseas, but was embarrassed in his last two bids at free-lance diplomacy - over a U.S. plane held in China and the U.N. racism conference.

A month ago, Jackson boasted he'd gotten Yasser Arafat to agree that the U.N. conference in South Africa shouldn't label Israel as a racist state - but a few hours later, Arafat himself called Israel "colonial" and "racist."

During last spring's stalemate with China over a downed U.S. reconnaissance plane, Jackson offered to be a mediator. Team Bush told him to stay out, and resolved the crisis a few days later.

NEW YORK POST is a registered trademark of NYP Holdings, Inc. NYPOST.COM, NYPOSTONLINE.COM, and NEWYORKPOST.COM
are trademarks of NYP Holdings, Inc.
Copyright 2001 NYP Holdings, Inc.