PETER SNOW:                And I'm joined,  as before, 
 by Air Marshal Sir Tim Garden to analyse the situation.     It's not 
been a good week for the alliance against terrorism.  There's no sign at 
all, visible anyway, that the Taliban have been damaged by it so far, indeed 
they've scored one or two notable successes and Britain's Defence Chief 
who warned two weeks ago that the war could last till next summer is now 
talking of it lasting three or four years.  Well Britain has made a very 
cautious start to the  commitment of ground  troops. 

                        Of the twenty-thousand 
troops now ending an exercise in Oman, only two hundred, as John said, 
Royal Marines will stay on in the area backed by four thousand in the Navy 
and Air Force.  They'll be based afloat centred on an aircraft carrier 
and three war ships and three submarines here in the Arabian Sea.  The 
other four hundred Marines of 40 Commando will be at home on standby.  
 

                        Now the Marines' task 
-  as well as the SAS who are sure to be there as well - will be, we're 
told, to stage "precise surgical strikes" in Afghanistan, although we're 
also told operations may  extend to several weeks at a time.  But even 
that will be  a significant step up in the level of British involvement. 
 So far that's amounted to just two cruise missiles fired into Afghanistan 
from those submarines, in-flight refuelling of American Naval strike aircraft 
and reconnaissance flights over Afghanistan by RAF Canberras.  
                    
                        Now Air Marshal, when do you 
think we can expect to see British troops on the ground in Afghanistan?

AIR MARSHAL SIR TIM GARDEN:    I don't think we can predict. I mean 
the reasons why the numbers are only two hundred is so that they can be 
there for an indefinite period and we can have troops going out to relieve 
them. What is needed is intelligence and the intelligence is the most important 
thing so that they can do a quick in and out search and destroy mission 
in order to take advantage of intelligence and that's what they are good 
at. They are also well trained in mountain operations in the winter.   
  

SNOW:                    Two hundred troops is an 
extraordinarily small amount if you're thinking of going into this huge 
country - with what forty thousand Taliban or something. 
  
GARDEN:                    Well they are not doing 
it alone, the Americans also have special forces and their Marine...

SNOW:                    But what kind of contribution 
is two hundred troops?

GARDEN:                    It's a very significant 
one because of their expertise and their ability to go and do these search 
and destroy missions and the fact that they can be sustained now indefinitely. 


SNOW:                    What are we to make of Admiral 
Boyce and his only a few months of the war..only two weeks ago he said 
and now he's talking about three or four years, isn't there some kind of 
jitters inside the Ministry of Defence?

GARDEN:                    I think it's a reflection 
of the uncertainties of war and how long a campaign will go on.  As we 
saw in Kosovo we had no idea when it would finally end.  It might happen 
quite quickly, it may take through the winter and it may be a long haul. 
 So he's merely reflecting the fact that we have got to prepare ourselves 
and we've got to have contingency plans that allow us for the long haul 
but we hope we don't need the long haul. 

SNOW:                    How soon do you think we 
are going to find..I mean how important do you think it is that we find 
soon, real land action inside Afghanistan. Because the impression at the 
moment after three weeks is one that the British and the Americans, indeed 
the whole coalition is rather on the back foot isn't it?

GARDEN:                    I think we need patience. 
There is no point putting troops in if you haven't got the intelligence 
for what they have to do. So having got a situation now where you can listen 
to everything that is going on in Afghanistan, you can take the photographs, 
you can see what's going on, then you take the intelligence opportunity 
when it arises and that maybe tomorrow, it maybe next week, it may be next 
month. 

SNOW:                    Okay, what's happened this 
week on the ground in Afghanistan?  Well the bombing has if anything intensified 
over Afghanistan, the American strikes on Afghanistan. Friday night's raid 
on Kabul was one of the fiercest so far.  The Americans have published 
more pictures of what they say are successful raids. Let's just look at 
the picture of a barracks in Kabul which is clearly intact before the raid 
and after it, as you can see here, after it clearly flattened.  How much 
does the loss though of buildings like that actually effect fighters like 
the Taliban?  
                        Well now the continuing 
air strikes don't show any sign of any collapse by the Taliban, as the 
Americans admitted this week.  "They're tough warriors" said the Pentagon. 
 What's more civilian casualties are mounting.  This morning there are 
reports of civilians being hit in Kabul by US air strikes, Yesterday the 
Pentagon had to admit that another relief depot, Red Cross depot in Kabul 
was hit, twice in the same night, the second time by B52s and also a hospital 
in Herat.  

                        Well also last night, 
a stray bomb hit a Northern Alliance village near Mazar e Sharif killing 
nine people there.  Now one type of American bombing has provoked growing 
criticism - in the Commons and elsewhere - the use of cluster bombs which 
throw out up to two hundred bomblets over a wide area.  And there've been 
complaints that because they don't always explode -  those little bomblets 
-  immediately there's a greater risk to civilians.  One American Democrat, 
Senator Jo Biden, warned that America was running the risk of looking like 
a "high tech bully".  But the British Government says it believes "cluster 
bombs are sometimes necessary".   

                        As for the war on the 
ground - it is still essentially a fight between the Taliban. Here they 
are, we've coloured them green in the west and south of the country.  And 
in the north and north-east of the country, inside this dotted line here 
roughly, the Northern Alliance, we've coloured them yellow here, fighting 
away with the support of the Russians and others.   Now in these areas, 
the Americans have now been giving some direct air support to the Northern 
Alliance in their attacks on Kabul and on Mazar e Sharif and the Russians 
appear to be rearming the Northern Alliance and improving an airfield up 
here some fifty miles north of Kabul. But in spite of all this, the Taliban 
have not fallen back around Kabul and actually won back a town this week 
near Mazar.   Moreover the Taliban succeeded in catching Abdul Haq, a respected 
Mujahadeen leader who had come across the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan 
to explore prospects for encouraging resistance to the Taliban and they, 
the Taliban, for their part promptly executed him. 

                        Some reports indicate 
the Taliban's military arm could even extend into Pakistan.  Two American 
helicopters refuelling at a Pakistani airstrip this last week were shot 
at.  They were retrieving the helicopter that crashed earlier killing its 
two American crewmen and here they were under fire at a presumably protected 
airfield inside Pakistan.  And there are now reports of volunteers from 
Pakistan trying to cross the border into Afghanistan to reinforce the Taliban. 


                        Now Air Marshal, this 
is a pretty disturbing picture for the alliance against terrorism isn't 
it?

GARDEN:                       Well, we've had three 
weeks of operations so far,  already one of the main aims has been achieved, 
that is the destruction of the training camps of the terrorist organisation. 
There are two left to do which are the more difficult ones, so you get 
the easy one done first. And what we've got is now patient waiting for 
the right intelligence to get Bin Laden and his leadership, while at the 
same time weakening the Taliban's hold by surrounding the towns that they 
have, stopping their logistics and attacking their main supply routes all 
the time. 

SNOW:                    You mention these guerrilla 
camps, these terrorist camps, we also looked at the destruction of these 
barracks. Does it really matter destroying these buildings, do these Mujahadeen 
fighters, these Taliban fighters, these guerrilla fighters, terrorist fighters 
of Bin Laden, do they actually need buildings and camps now?

GARDEN:                    Well ten thousand have 
been trained through those camps in the past and they are no longer in 
Afghanistan, they are around the world and they are a threat. So what we 
want to do is make sure that there isn't an infrastructure for them to 
train another ten thousand. It's one tiny part of the overall campaign, 
but it is important. 

SNOW:                    What about the use of cluster 
bombs, do you think they are militarily useful?

GARDEN:                    Well it's a difficult decision 
because there are various targets set, dispersed vehicles for example, 
for which the cluster bomb is the ideal military weapon to do this.  It 
has, as you explained, some unfortunate effects, that not all its little 
munitions go off. Not only is that a hazard to the locals, it's also a 
hazard when we have to go in afterwards and clear them up, we lost some..or 
some people suffered some casualties when they were in Kosovo trying to 
do the clear up operation.

SNOW:                    So you would be against them?

GARDEN:                    Well my personal view is 
that I think the political disadvantages outweigh the military advantages. 


SNOW:                    Okay, Air Marshal, thank 
you very much. 

                        John.