In the war of spin, US opens a new front

But the Taliban press conferences reached the widest audiences, often carried live on CNN and Al Jazeera, in what some Pakistani officials called a "feast of disinformation."

"A country cannot use its embassy for the purposes against a third country," Aziz Khan, Pakistan Home Office spokesman, told reporters. "A country has to observe diplomatic norms and be advised of the third-country rule. The Afghan ambassador was told and reminded of this third-country rule."

When asked whether an outside country pressured Pakistan to shut down the Taliban press conferences, Mr. Khan smiled. "We felt the need to remind him," he said.

The press conferences certainly had their flaws, the greatest of which was the Taliban's inability to provide proof of their charges of civilian death tolls. Most reporters thus were forced to report Taliban statements, along with the caveat that there was "no independent confirmation" of their truth.

Consider the case of John Bolton. According to the Taliban ambassador, a man

identifying himself as Mazhar Ayub was captured on Oct. 26 with a satellite phone in the southern Afghan town of Spin Boldak. The Taliban reported that Mazhar Ayub was actually an American citizen named John Bolton, a Vietnam war veteran who was working on a "spy mission" in Afghanistan.

Whoever he was, John Bolton/Mazhar Ayub died in Taliban custody last weekend. The Taliban asked the International Committee of the Red Cross to return the body to the American government, but American spokesmen insisted that the victim was not an American. The Red Cross eventually had to bury the body in Afghanistan for hygienic reasons, says Pascal Duport, deputy director of ICRC Pakistan. He added that Red Cross officials managed to contact the family, and that they are not American, but he would not elaborate in order to protect their privacy.

When and if the US coalition's media center opens, it will likely handle the hundreds of press calls for information on cases like John Bolton, and provide comment or verification of the latest battlefield claims.

The center's spokesmen will also have the unenviable task of doling out the latest numbers of US and Taliban casualties. In Pakistan's western state of Baluchistan, for instance, Pakistani newspapers quoted local and state officials as saying a US Chinook helicopter crashed near the border town of Dalbandin, 18 miles south of the border. Some papers said the Taliban shot at the chopper and caused a crash landing, killing four US soldiers. But Pakistani and US officials claimed to have "no independent confirmation" of the crashed helicopter. Pentagon spokesman Major Jay Steuck said the US military had no report of a helicopter crashing in Pakistan, Afghanistan, or for that matter anywhere else.

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