Powell says U.S. can link bin Laden, al Qaeda to attacks

Thousands of Americans gathered in Yankee Stadium Sunday to pray and provide comfort to one another in the wake of the attacks.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States will be able to link Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to the terror attacks in New York and Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday.

He warned that a campaign against the reclusive suspected terrorist and his network could cost lives.

"War is war and there will be casualties," said Powell, who pointed out "there is no such thing as zero-casualty conflict" in a fight against terrorism.

Speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press," Powell said he is "absolutely convinced" bin Laden and al Qaeda are responsible for the aerial attacks that leveled the World Trade Center's twin towers and damaged the Pentagon on September 11.

"The network has to be ripped up and brought to justice," he said.

Bin Laden, said Powell, is "not someone to be admired. ... He is someone to be condemned as against civilization as we know it. He is a murderer. ... He has murdered thousands of people from around the world. ... That's what he should be seen as, a murderer."

Powell also emphasized the target of any U.S. retaliation would be bin Laden, not the Afghan people.

"We are interested in going after Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda network, murderers of over 6,000 people in this incident, murderers in earlier incidents," he said. (Full story)

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Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Sunday all but accused Afghanistan's ruling Taliban of lying when it told the United States it did not know the whereabouts of bin Laden or members of his network.

"The fact is that the Taliban do know where the al Qaeda organization is -- and the fact that they say that they don't -- is simply not credible," Rumsfeld said. (Full story)

Abdullah Abdullah, the foreign minister for Afghanistan's opposition Northern Alliance, also cast doubt on the Taliban response and said he is "quite confident" bin Laden is in Afghanistan. Abdullah said alliance forces took the towns of Zari and Keshendeh, both in Balkh province in the north, and killed 60 Taliban fighters. (Full story)

In New York, thousands of family members of those killed or still missing in the World Trade Center attacks gathered Sunday at Yankee Stadium for an interfaith prayer service.

"We shall not be moved," said Oprah Winfrey, the mistress of ceremonies, addressing a throng grasping American flags, holding photos of love ones and wiping away tears. "We're here, thousands strong in Yankee Stadium, to say to the world hope lives, prayer lives, love lives."

Adversity has united the country as never before, said actor James Earl Jones, who delivered the introduction. "We are united not only in our grief, but also in our resolve to build a better world," Jones said. "Our spirit is unbroken -- in fact, it is stronger than ever." (Full story | Quotes)

Latest developments

• Breaking a day of Pentagon silence about the Taliban's claims that it shot down a U.S. spy plane, Rumsfeld acknowledged Sunday that the U.S. has "lost contact" with an unmanned surveillance drone. (Full story)

• Members of militant Islamic groups entered hotels in the Indonesian city of Solo on Sunday, warning "Americans and their allies" to leave if the U.S. launches an attack on Afghanistan. Radical Muslims in the central Java city visited six international hotels and demanded to see guest lists in order to identify American and European guests. (Full story)

• U.S. forces are getting into position to address "a worldwide problem" in an anti-terrorist campaign that could involve strikes on countries beyond Afghanistan, Rumsfeld said Sunday.

• President Bush held a ceremony Sunday at the Camp David, Maryland, presidential retreat to return the American flag to full staff for the first time since the attacks.

• British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in a letter to the people of Iran that "the war on terrorism is not remotely a war against Islam." Straw, who wrote the letter ahead of his visit to Iran on Monday, would be the highest-ranking British official to visit Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution. (Full story)

• Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by telephone with five Central Asian leaders Sunday. According to Deputy Residential Chief of Staff Sergei Prikhodko, Putin discussed coordination of actions in dealing with the current situation in the region. The nations are Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, which are on the Afghan border, and Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, which are close to Afghanistan. (Full story)

• Federal authorities have banned U.S. airlines and U.S.-licensed pilots from flying over Afghanistan, saying such flights are "not in the national security interests of the United States." The little-noticed edict was signed by Federal Aviation Administrator Jane Garvey and became effective September 19.

• Iraq will probably be a target of U.S. military action in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, and American forces may be "right close" to such an attack, Sen. Jesse Helms, R-North Carolina, told CNN Saturday. (Full story)

• Diplomatic sources said Saudi Arabia could make an announcement in the coming days about changing its relationship with the Taliban. The United States wants Saudi Arabia to break off diplomatic relations with the Taliban. Also, Saudi Arabia has not yet explicitly stated its support for the United States to use a Saudi air base in a possible attack against Afghanistan or any other countries suspected of harboring terrorists.

• President Bush on Saturday signed into law an emergency aid package for the U.S. airline industry, saying that "the terrorists who attacked our country on September 11th will not shut down our vital businesses or thwart our way of life." (Full story)

• President Bush on Saturday lifted economic sanctions on India and Pakistan that had been imposed for nuclear tests in 1998. (Full story)

• An administration official told CNN on Saturday that Bush plans to sign an executive order freezing the U.S. assets of specific suspected terrorists and terrorist organizations. The official said the order could be signed as early as this weekend but would not confirm that bin Laden or al Qaeda would be on that list.

• Time magazine reported that U.S. law enforcement officials found a manual on the operation of crop-dusting equipment during a search of a suspected terrorist hideout. Government sources told the magazine the U.S. suspects that members of bin Laden's group may have planned to use crop-dusting planes to spread chemical or biological weapons. (Full story)

• Former President Clinton said Saturday he had authorized a plan to arrest, and if necessary, kill bin Laden -- and had even contacted a group in Afghanistan to carry out the plan. But that group was not successful, he said. (Full story)