Bush Calls Bin Laden 'Prime Suspect'

Washington - President George W. Bush yesterday branded Osama bin Laden the "prime suspect" in Tuesday's terror attacks, the first time the president himself has named the Saudi fugitive as the most-likely culprit.

Declaring "We're at war," Bush warned Americans that retaliation would require a prolonged and difficult fight, one that would test the nation's resolve. To U.S. troops he issued this call: "Get ready."

"This act will not stand," Bush said, invoking words his father, the former president, used shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, which led to the Persian Gulf War. "We will find those who did it. We will smoke them out of their holes. We'll get them running, and we'll bring them to justice."

With Bush presiding over a war council at Camp David, diplomatic efforts to rally a worldwide coalition for the coming attack got a major lift when Pakistan agreed to a list of U.S. requests for cooperation in rooting out bin Laden, Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday.

Pakistan has agreed to serve as a base for a multinational force to launch attacks on neighboring Afghanistan, the nation believed to be harboring bin Laden and an almost certain target of any military assaults.

Afghanistan's radical Taliban rulers have threatened holy war against anyone helping the United States attack their country.

With such vital pieces falling into place in rapid succession - Congress authorizing the use of force, Bush's approving the call-up of 50,000 reservists and the outlines of an anti-terrorism coalition taking shape - America's march toward active military engagement appeared to hasten yesterday. Bush's increasingly war-like tone underlined that only the methods and timing were in question.

Military leaders say nothing has been ruled out, including the use of ground troops, in the effort to retaliate for Tuesday's attacks. Three hijacked commercial airliners slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, leaving at least 5,000 unaccounted for and presumed dead, nearly all in lower Manhattan. A fourth hijacked plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania.

Bush and defense leaders have given no indication of when military action might begin, but they are being forced to strike a delicate balance between American hunger for quick retribution and the need to locate those responsible and solidify the world coalition, complex steps that could take months.

Yesterday Bush took pains to prepare Americans for what lies ahead, warning them not to expect only the kind of limited retaliation that sometimes has served as the U.S. response to terrorism in the past, such as strikes President Bill Clinton ordered in the wake of the bombings at two American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

"I will not settle for a token act. Our response must be sweeping, sustained and effective," Bush said, referring to the attackers as a "group of barbarians."

Bush also told reporters that he hoped the American people could be spared any significant sacrifice but made clear he could not guarantee that daily life would go unchanged.

"We have much to do, and much to ask of the American people," he said in his weekly radio address. "You will be asked for your patience, for the conflict will not be short. You will be asked for resolve, for the conflict will not be easy. You will be asked for your strength, because the course to victory may be long."

New York Sens. Charles Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton used the weekly response to the president's address - often a forum for Democrats to criticize Bush - to thank him for his leadership and support one day after Bush visited the World Trade Center site.

"On behalf of every New Yorker . . . I want to extend our deepest gratitude to the president and the people of America," Schumer said. "In our darkest hour of need, you have shown us light."

That remarkable visit, with the president standing on a pile of rubble and addressing weary rescuers through a bullhorn, is likely to provide a turning point in Bush's relations with New York, a state he lost resoundingly in last year's election and has rarely visited as president.

Bush appears mindful that Americans could grow weary of a protracted military effort to get bin Laden, especially one that involves American casualties, and warned them yesterday of the difficulty ofthis conflict, one that Bush said was "without battlefields or beachheads, a conflict with opponents who believe they are invisible.

"Yet they are mistaken," Bush added. "They will be exposed, and they will discover what others in the past have learned: Those who make war against the United States have chosen their own destruction."

Related topic galleries: Hillary Clinton, National Government, New York, Osama bin Laden, George Bush, Terrorism, Bill Clinton