Kabul, Afghanistan – Four years after the United States and allies toppled the terrorist- supporting Taliban regime of Afghanistan, President Bush arrived in Kabul for his first visit Wednesday to face questions about the still-elusive Osama bin Laden, who has found refuge in the region.
“I am confident he will be brought to justice,” Bush said of the fugitive al-Qaeda leader during a news conference outside the Afghan presidential palace.
“What’s happening is that we’ve got U.S. forces on the hunt for not only bin Laden but anybody who plots and plans with bin Laden,” said Bush, making an unannounced stop at Bagram Air Base en route to New Delhi, India, and Islamabad, Pakistan, this week.
“It’s not a matter of if they are captured and brought to justice, but when they’re captured and brought to justice,” Bush said.
It’s a particularly sensitive question on the president’s three-day trip to India and Pakistan, where bin Laden and chief lieutenants have long been suspected of hiding in a renegade region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border that has remained resistant to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s campaign to track down terrorists.
In India early this morning, Bush, seeking to warm relations with the world’s largest democracy, effusively praised his hosts amid last-minute haggling in search of a nuclear deal with New Delhi.
“I have been received in many capitals around the world, but I have never seen a reception as well organized or as grand,” Bush said after a colorful arrival ceremony in a sun-drenched plaza at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the president’s palace. “It’s an honor to be here.”
Bush will meet with Musharraf on Saturday in Islamabad.
Musharraf, an army general who seized power in a 1999 coup and quickly allied with the U.S. in the aftermath of the terrorist assaults of Sept. 11, 2001, boasts of having captured 700 terrorists in cooperation with the United States. Yet bin Laden, mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, remains the most notorious and elusive of a besieged al-Qaeda leadership.
“There are Afghan forces on the hunt, for not only bin Laden but those who plot and plan with him,” said Bush, promising to raise the issue in Pakistan. “We’ve got Pakistan forces on the hunt. Part of my message to President Musharraf is that it’s important we bring these people to justice.”
Bush’s five-hour stop in Afghanistan – meeting with President Hamid Karzai and other governmental leaders at the presidential palace, having lunch, holding a news conference, visiting the U.S. Embassy and addressing American troops at Bagram Air Base – represented his first visit there. Vice President Dick Cheney and first lady Laura Bush had made separate visits before the president’s.
The White House did not announce the visit until Air Force One was en route.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
