United Arab Emirates Cuts Ties With Taliban

Sept. 22, 2001 -- The American Flag atop the Capitol building returned to full staff Saturday as U.S. military forces moved toward the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan.

On Saturday, President Bush lifted U.S. sanctions against Pakistan and India, imposed on both countries in 1998 because of their practice on nuclear testing. Bush said the sanctions were no longer "in the national security interests of the United States." The move was seen as a reward for pledges to help the United States in its efforts against the Taliban, the Islamic militia that claims to be the ruling regime of Afghanistan.

The United Arab Emirates cut ties with the Taliban. Now, only two nations, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, recognize the Taliban as the legitimate Afghan government.

The move gave a significant boost to U.S. diplomatic efforts to put pressure on the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden, whom President Bush has named the prime suspect in the deadly Sept. 11 attacks on America. Bush has authorized a military mobilization that could be used against Afghanistan.

"The United Arab Emirates does not believe that it is possibleto continue to maintain diplomatic relations with a government thatrefuses to respond to the clear will of the internationalcommunity," an unnamed foreign ministry official told the UAE official news agency.

In Afghanistan, where opposition forces launched heavy fighting, a Taliban official said the regime shot down an unmanned spy plane in a northern province and were trying to determine what nation it belonged to. The Afghan Islamic Press, an Afghan news agency based inIslamabad, Pakistan, first reported that it was a U.S. spy plane, then saidit wasn't sure which country it was from.

Pentagon officials declined to comment on the reports, saying their policy was not to respond to "each and every claim made by the Taliban." A senior defense official told ABCNEWS to be "highly skeptical" of the Taliban's report.

Bush Meets With Top Advisers

President Bush held a national security meeting by videoconference from the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md. Joining Bush at Camp David were national security adviser Condoleeza Rice, CIA Director George Tenet and White House chief of staff Andrew Card.

Following on his Thursday speech to a joint session of Congress, where Bush proclaimed the United States would confront terrorism with force, the president used his Saturday radio address to soothe the nation's economic fears.

"Our economy has had a shock," Bush said. "Yet, for all these challenges, the American economy is fundamentally strong." See Story

Bush also continued his outreach to world leaders. The president spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A White House aide described it as "a long call" and said the two men discussed cooperation in the battle against terrorism.

Administration officials praised the support they've received from other countries, including Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Although the Washington Post reported that the Saudis were balking over U.S. use of a key command center on a Saudi military base for any air war against terrorists, The Associated Press reports a senior U.S. official as saying America has "a command and control center" with the Saudis that is "up andrunning and operational."

Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit told Bush in a letter that he has agreed to allow U.S. Air Force transport aircraft to useTurkish air space and airports, and also offered to share intelligence.

Bush also reportedly planned to sign an executive order identifying terrorists around the world and aiming to freeze their U.S. assets. Former President Clinton issued similar orders involving bin Laden, the al Qaeda network and the Taliban in the wake of the 1998 terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, in which bin Laden has been indicted.

In other developments:

The FBI wants to question 240 people in connection with the terror attacks, law enforcement sources said. More than six people have already been arrested and are being held as material witnesses in the investigation.

Justice Department officials said federal investigators foundbox-cutters similar to those used by the hijackers aftersearches of some planes on the ground after the terror attacks. The flights included one from Boston headed to an undisclosed location, and a flight from Atlanta to Brussels.

Pope John Paul II arrived in Kazakhstan and declared that disputesbetween nations should be solved through dialogue and not force.

Pro-Taliban parties protested in Pakistan on Saturday, but opposition to President Pervez Musharraf's pledge to help the United States track down bin Laden appeared to be fading. About 500 people marched through the town of Peshawar on the Afghanistan border and burned an effigy of Bush.

Struggle Evident on Cockpit Voice Recorder

As investigators continue their worldwide hunt for suspects and evidence into the terrorist hijackings, some clues are being pulled from the cockpit voice recorder found in the wreckage of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed outside Shanksville, Pa., on Sept. 11, killing all 44 passengers and crew.

A desperate struggle took place aboard the hijacked plane before it plunged into a reclaimed strip mine in Western Pennsylvania at about 500 miles an hour, law enforcement officials say. The recorder, which uses microphones in the pilots' headsets and on the cockpit ceiling, picked up sounds from a brawl as well as exclamations in Arabic and English, officials said. The specifics of the struggle have not been discerned from the recording, they said.

Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller have both heard the recording, officials said. On a visit to the Shanksville site on Thursday, Mueller said, "We believe those passengers on this jet were absolute heroes and their actions during this flight were heroic."

Based on accounts from family members and telephone operators who spoke with passengers of Flight 93 prior to the crash, authorities had already believed a struggle had probably taken place between passengers and the hijackers, resulting in the downing of the plane into an empty field instead of an unknown high-profile target in Washington.

Flight 93 was one of four passenger jets hijacked on the morning of Sept. 11. Two jets originating in Boston were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center; a fourth plane left Washington Dulles International airport and eventually dived into the Pentagon.

Both "black boxes," the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, were found at the Pentagon site, but the voice recorder was too badly burned to recover any information. No black boxes have been found at the World Trade Center site.

Was Saturday Significant to Terror Campaign?

Across the nation, Americans tried to return to normalcy, including a return to sports stadiums. It was the first full weekend of baseball and football games since the attacks. But security was tight — authorities banned all aircraft from flying within 3 miles of major sporting events and spectators were barredfrom taking backpacks or containers to the games.

At sundown on Saturday in Washington, DC, the American flag flying over the US Capitol building was officially raised from half mast to full mast.

Sept. 22 was a date of some concern to U.S. law enforcement officials, since the FBI has found paperwork and e-mails from the dead hijackers referencing this date, and law enforcement officials also believe some of the dead hijackers had booked flights for Saturday.

Ashcroft called acting Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino on Thursday to alert them to the threat of possible terrorist activity in Boston, where two of the hijacked flights originated. But on Friday, Justice Department and local officials downplayed the likelihood of attacks on the city.

"We have … no new information that has caused us to be alarmed," Merino told reporters. "There are no specific threats to the safety of the people of Boston."

A senior intelligence official told ABCNEWS that as far as future threats go, the government did not have "specific dates or methods for those attacks."

What is continuing today is the rescue effort in New York at the site of the demolished World Trade Center. Even though a survivor has not been found for more than a week, officials refuse to proclaim it solely a recovery effort.

The official number of people missing at the World Trade Center stands at 6,333 — and 261 are confirmed dead, 194 of whom have been identified, New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said on Saturday.