By GEOFF CUMMING AND AGENCIES
After three weeks of air strikes that have killed Afghan civilians but failed to flush out Osama bin Laden, leaders of the international coalition against terrorism are battling waning public support and doubts about the direction of the war.
United States, British and French leaders vigorously defended the military campaign yesterday as domestic criticism mounted and the Taleban taunted the US about its bombing strategy.
The Taleban claimed the bombing was having minimal effect and its forces were waiting for the "real war" to start with the arrival of US ground forces.
The hardline Muslim militia said it had not lost a single soldier.
"In the first phase [of the war] there is no significant achievement as the Pentagon wished to achieve, except the genocide of Afghan civilians," the Taleban's Ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said in Islamabad.
He accused Washington of using chemical weapons and invited outside observers to check the claim.
Zaeef even turned down the offer of help from thousands of armed Pakistani tribesmen eager to fight, saying they were not needed.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld launched a verbal counter-attack, accusing the Taleban and bin Laden's al Qaeda network of using Afghan civilians as human shields and blaming them for every death in the conflict.
Rumsfeld also dismissed Taleban claims that its militia had arrested Americans in Afghanistan.
"There's no question that Taleban and al Qaeda people, military, have been killed," he said.
But US hopes that switching the bombing campaign to the Taleban frontline would lead to mass defections have failed to materialise. Rebel fighters insist the bombing to date has not posed an insurmountable challenge to the Taleban, who continue to pound rebel positions with rockets, mortars and artillery.
The lack of clear results, the collateral damage and continuing strife in the Middle East have prompted increasingly hostile comment from within the coalition and in once-supportive newspapers.
British officials have likened the slump in support to the "three-week wobble" which occurred in the bombing campaign in Kosovo. But unlike that campaign, the coalition is relying on continued support from Muslim and Arab nations.
Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf and Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, worried about public reaction in their countries, have urged the US to make the bombing as short as possible.
The use of ground troops is seen as inevitable if bin Laden, prime suspect in the terrorist attacks on Washington and New York, is to be caught or killed.
The Pentagon yesterday acknowledged it was considering setting up a base inside opposition-held Afghan territory.
But previous large-scale invasions of Afghanistan have come at a high cost and misgivings have grown with warnings from coalition leaders that the war on terror might take several years.
With several US politicians joining Afghan opposition calls for more vigorous bombing, President George W. Bush called for patience yesterday, saying it would take "a while" for Washington to meet its objectives.
General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the air campaign had been effective.
"We are pretty much on our plan. We are in the driver's seat," Myers said.
But in Britain, award-winning journalist John Pilger called the war a fraud, pointing out that not a single terrorist implicated in the September 11 attacks had been caught or killed in Afghanistan.
Tabloid daily the Mirror, a staunch supporter of Prime Minister Tony Blair, acknowledged the anti-war clamour: "The fact is that whether the Government likes it or not, the people of this country remain distinctly unconvinced that bombing the hell out of Kabul will stop Osama bin Laden carrying out more atrocities."
Dismayed by the criticism, Blair was due overnight to call on Britons to rekindle the spirit that saw the country through the German bombing blitz of the Second World War.
"It's important we never forget why we are doing this, never forget what we felt watching the planes fly into the twin towers," he was to say in a speech in Cardiff.
Meanwhile, the United Nations special envoy for Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi, met senior Pakistanis seeking ideas on forming a broad-based government in Kabul to one day replace the Taleban.
Story archives:
Links: War against terrorism
Timeline: Major events since the Sept 11 attacks
Support wanes for air campaign
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