U.S. keeps military option alive against bin Laden

The Clinton administration is considering a military option to punish Osama bin Laden if investigators conclude the Saudi fugitive was behind the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. But any military action against bin Laden's redoubts in Afghanistan would be declared a "pre-emptive" effort to forestall future attacks, not a retaliatory strike, U.S. officials said.

That is because the United Nations charter prohibits the use of armed force by one state against another, except in self-defence or with UN Security Council approval. Retaliation, in other words, is not acceptable justification for using force. Self-defence is allowed under international law, but what constitutes "self-defence" is a matter of debate, according to Michael Matheson, a law professor and former State Department lawyer.

The U.S., Matheson said, takes the "robust" position that it has an ongoing right to act against a "continuing threat" such as bin Laden, who already has been indicted in New York for plotting the truck bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.

U.S. officials have also said that there are tantalising links between the October 12 attack on the Cole and the 1998 embassy bombings - but no clear evidence tying bin Laden to the Cole blast. Michael Glennon, a professor of law at the University of California at Davis, said it is unclear how strong the evidence must be to justify a military strike.

"That is not a question that international law answers," Glennon said, adding that in his opinion Clinton should "insist upon" evidence that is "highly probative, but not necessarily beyond a reasonable doubt".

L. Paul Bremer III, chairman of the National Commission on Terrorism and a former State Department ambassador-at-large for counter-terrorism, argues for a standard of proof in national security cases that would not necessarily secure a conviction in a U.S. court – as the Clinton administration used when it fired 79 cruise missiles at bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan and at a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan in August 1998.

However, the missile attack on the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan appears to have been a mistake. U.S. officials have backed away from claims that its owner is linked to bin Laden. They now admit that the plant produced medicines and may not have been involved in making chemical weapons.

According to Clinton administration officials, U.S. options include pressure on Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, efforts to arrest and prosecute bin Laden's associates, covert intelligence action and military strikes.

Bremer said Clinton faces a difficult choice. Military strikes without a broader strategy for countering bin Laden won't accomplish much, he said. But doing nothing, he added, isn't an option.