U.S. Plans to ``Mobilize Additional 50,000 Reserve Forces``

As it has been four weeks since the U.S. attacks against Afghanistan, the Taliban government expressed that it would negotiate with the U.S.

The Taliban spokesperson Amir Kan Mutaki said at the interview with the AP Press, ``We do not want to fight and intend to negotiate. However, since Afghanistan is not under the rule of the U.S., the U.S. should treat Afghanistan as an independent nation.``

Meanwhile, the U.S. Defense Minister Donald Rumsfeld announced on Wednesday that the U.S. is planning to mobilize additional 50,000 reserve forces.

The U.S. has already called up 41,392 reserve forces and federal defense forces to the active service duty, such as the domestic security. Therefore, it became difficult for the U.S. to keep the original numbers of 50,000 reserve forces, which were approved by the Congress, right after 9.11 incident.

Along with this, the U.S. asked Turkey, the only Islam nation within the NATO, to dispatch the military forces to Afghanistan, and the Pakistan newspapers reported yesterday that the Turkey government is positively considering the request.

The official number of dead and missing people due to the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania was estimated to be 4,685. Categorized by the region, it was estimated that 4,452 people in New York (3,962 missing people at the World Trade Center, 490 recovery of the corpse, including the passengers of the crashed planes); 189 in Washington D.C. (125 at Pentagon, 64 passengers of the American Airline flight 77); 44 in Pennsylvania (44 passengers of the United Air flight 93), died.

sechepa@donga.com