US Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, said yesterday the military operation in Afghanistan would not drag on for years, as the effectiveness of bombing raids against the Taliban was improving daily.
"We will take the least possible time," Mr Rumsfeld said in New Delhi of the campaign to eliminate Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organisation and his Taliban hosts.
"There is no question that the effectiveness of the bombing is vastly improved as you have people on the ground in communication with the aircraft overhead," Mr Rumsfeld said after an hour-long meeting with his Indian counterpart, Mr George Fernandes.
India was Mr Rumsfeld's last stop in a five-nation tour that took him to Moscow, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan to bolster the coalition against the Taliban.
Mr Rumsfeld strongly refuted Mr Fernande's assertion that persistent US bombing raids over Afghanistan was a waste of ordnance on barren mountains.
"We are engaged in a military exercise of self-defence," Mr Rumsfeld stated. As it is impossible to defend every possible target where terrorists may strike, the only way to do it is to take the battle to them, he added.
"Do I think the operation in Afghanistan will take years? No I don't," he declared.
Mr Rumsfeld arrived in India in the early hours from Islamabad, where, after meeting Gen Pervez Musharraf, he declared that the Taliban no longer functioned as a proper government, but that its terror networks still posed a threat to global security.
But he avoided mentioning Washington's concerns over escalating tensions between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan over the disputed state of Kashmir, which if inflamed could seriously undermine the ongoing campaign in Afghanistan.
The US Deputy Secretary of State, Mr Richard Armitage, recently called Kashmir the "most dangerous place in the world" because it was contested by two nuclear powers that were constantly "shooting, shouting and glaring at one another".
On Sunday, India and Pakistan exchanged heavy artillery and small arms fire across the line of control that divides Kashmir between them.
Another 35 people, including six Indian soldiers also died at the weekend in clashes with separatist militants fighting the 12-year old civil war in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Mr Rumsfeld played down Indian fears that Islamic militants could seize Pakistan's nuclear warheads if Gen Musharraf was ousted by fundamentalists aligned with the Taliban.
"I do not personally believe that there is a risk with respect to the nuclear weapons of countries that have such weapons," he declared in a reference to Pakistan.
