MR. LEHRER: I know the specifics are off limits at this moment. The President spoke of what it's going to take to stop this kind of thing. Can you give us, as a military man before you became a diplomatic man, give us a feel -- give the American people a feel for the magnitude of what lays before them as a people, as a nation.

SECRETARY POWELL: What lies before them is a long, tough campaign. We should have no illusions that a few missile strikes will take care of this problem. They are well entrenched, they are well dispersed. It is not an enemy sitting out in the middle of a battlefield waiting to be attacked. They are clever. They are resourceful and they are thinking. They are always trying to think what we might do to them.

So we have to see this as a long campaign plan, using all of the weapons and tools at our disposal -- political, economic -- to isolate them, diplomatically isolate them, isolate those countries that give them support and serve as their host; in terms of legal actions, go after their sources of money, go after their ability to move back and forth around the world, put them on watch lists, be on the lookout for those who we know are identified with this organization; and, always, always, be prepared to conduct a military strike when targets surface and targets become available that make it clear that you have found the perpetrators and somebody we ought to go after. And of course there are covert things that one can be doing that I wouldn't discuss here, but you are familiar with, Jim.



Until Unocal relinquished its shares in Centgas, it had held an 85 per cent stake in conjunction with the Saudi Arabian company Delta Oil (which became the leader of the consortium following Unocal's withdrawal). Other holders included Pakistan's Crescent Group, Russia's Gazprom, South Korea's Hyundai Engineering & Construction Company, and two Japanese firms, Inpex and Itochu. When the consortium was formed, Marty Miller, Unocal Corporation vice-president responsible for new ventures in Central Asia and Pakistan, had explained that "no other import project can provide such volumes of natural gas to [the markets of India and Pakistan] at a lower price. Market analyses, according to a Unocal press release dated 27 October 1997, "indicate that Pakistan's electric power generation market will be the main consumer of the imported gas."

Removing the Taliban from Afghanistan and installing an "internationally recognised government" would eliminate the main obstacle to Unocal's investment in the pipeline project. In this perspective, a side effect of the US-led attacks [...] would benefit Big Oil.

Nina Burleigh, one of the first reporters to enter Iraq after the Gulf War, observed: "So many business deals, so much oil, all those big players with powerful connections to the Bush administration. It doesn't add up to a conspiracy theory. But it does mean there is a significant money subtext [...] as 'Operation Enduring Freedom' blasts new holes where pipelines might someday be buried."