A shy, courteous boy

LONDON, Sept 22 (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden was a quiet and shy pupil, a British teacher who taught him English at an elite Saudi Arabian school was quoted as saying today.

Brian Fyfield-Shayler told Britain's Sun newspaper the boy who grew into the world's most wanted man behaved well, did all his work on time and was not particularly religious.

"I remember him as quiet, retiring and rather shy," Fyfield-Shayler, 69, was quoted as saying. "He was very courteous _ more so than any of the others in his class."

Bin Laden, son of a wealthy Saudi industrialist, joined 30 boys in Fyfield-Shayler's class at the Al-Thaghr school in Jeddah during 1968 and 1969, the Sun said.

He is now the prime suspect behind last week's attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.

"Physically, he was outstanding because he was taller, more handsome and fairer than most of the other boys," the ex-teacher said. "He also stood out as he was singularly gracious and polite, and had a great deal of inner confidence."

Fyfield-Shayler, now retired and living in southwest England, said he believed the Western-style education at the school may have sewn the seeds of violence in bin Laden.

He and the other boys wore Western-style school uniforms of white shirts, black trousers, shoes and socks.

"I'm pretty sure that looking back at a school like that, he would have decided it was rather alien," Fyfield-Shayler said.

But he did not remember his former pupil as particularly religious. "There were students in each class who were always the first to rush off to prayer. But he wasn't one of them."

U.S. sends planes, men for attack on Afghanistan

WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD, Saturday (Reuters) - The United States stepped up its military buildup today for a coming assault on Afghanistan, whose Islamic rulers are refusing to surrender Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in last week's attack on America that left more than 6,800 dead or missing.

Heavy B-1 and B-52 bombers and "warthog" attack planes, designed for taking out tanks and close air support of ground forces, lumbered into the air from bases in the American heartland on their way to the Gulf and the Indian Ocean in the biggest U.S. military mobilisation since the 1991 Gulf War.

Afghanistan's ruling Taliban said its forces had shot down an aircraft in the north of the country, but officials issued conflicting statements on whether it was an unmanned U.S. spy plane or a helicopter of the opposition Northern Alliance. The Pentagon had no comment.

Bush, in his weekly radio address to Americans, sought to bolster confidence in the U.S. economy after the worst week in Wall Street financial markets since the 1930s.

"The terrorists who attacked the United States on Sept. 11 targeted our economy as well as our people," Bush said. "They brought down a symbol of American prosperity but they could not touch its source."

The aftershocks of the suicide plane assaults on New York's World Trade Centre and the Pentagon pummeled the U.S. economy this week, leading a growing number of analysts to conclude the United States has entered a recession.

"Our economy has had a shock," Bush acknowledged, noting many workers lost their jobs this week, especially in the airline and hospitality industries, in restaurants and in tourism, as companies struggled to remain afloat.

"Many Americans have also seen the value of their stocks decline," Bush said. "Yet, for all these challenges, the American economy is fundamentally strong."

Bush, who has vowed to wage a global "war on terrorism" and states supporting it, convened a meeting of his National Security Council by teleconference from the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland.

"The president has made it abundantly clear that this nation is preparing for war, because war has been declared against the United States," Bush's spokesman Ari Fleischer said on Friday.

Bush had put the Taliban "on notice" and was "preparing to do what must inevitably come next," he said.

The Taliban on Friday rejected an ultimatum from the U.S. president to hand over bin Laden, based in Afghanistan as their "guest", without evidence the Saudi-born Islamic militant masterminded the hijacked airliner attacks on New York and Washington. Pakistan again asked the Taliban to consider the grave consequences of defiance.

"We hope that the Taliban would consider the grave situation and will also consider how to meet the demands the U.N. Security Council had made to them," Foreign Ministry spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan told a news conference.

U.S. defense officials said about a dozen more aircraft, including refueling planes, would soon move to the Gulf and Indian Ocean _ within range of Afghanistan _ to join nearly 350 warplanes at land bases and on two aircraft carriers.

The U.S. assault ship Essex left Sasebo naval base in Japan on Saturday and was expected to head for the Indian Ocean. The carrier USS Kitty Hawk, which carries about 70 aircraft, left its home port near Tokyo on Friday.

Tens of thousands of Afghans have fled cities and towns and headed for the relative safety of the countryside in anticipation of a U.S. military strike following the Sept. 11 attacks that left some 6,800 people dead or missing.

Aid agencies in Kabul said the impoverished country faced a humanitarian crisis, with essential supplies likely to run out within a month after Pakistan and Iran sealed their borders.

The hard-line Islamic movement vowed to resist any assault from the world's mightiest armed forces, defying a warning that failure to surrender bin Laden would be met with retribution.

"It would be a showdown of might," Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, the Taliban envoy to Pakistan, told reporters in Islamabad. "We will never surrender to evil and might."

The twin threats of war and recession have loomed ever larger over the world economy since the airliner attacks, which leveled the 110-storey twin towers of New York's World Trade Centre and blew a hole in the Pentagon outside Washington.

A fourth hijacked plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania.

Wall Street ended its worst week since the 1930s Great Depression, with the benchmark Dow Jones industrial average down 14.2 percent after a five-day stampede out of equities.

Congress acted late on Friday to aid another victim of the attacks: the airlines. The Senate and House of Representatives approved a $15 billion rescue plan for the industry.

With many American and other travelers terrified of flying, airlines have cut flight schedules by about 20 percent and announced job cuts of more than 100,000 since the attacks.

In a Reuters poll of 25 leading Wall Street brokers, all but one said the economy was now in recession and most did not expect a recovery before the first half of 2002.

Muslim Turkey, a NATO member, and the Philippines both pledged logistical support to the United States on Saturday in any response to the attacks. Ankara said it would allow U.S. transport aircraft to use Turkish airspace and air bases, while Manila said U.S. Air Force planes would be allowed to refuel in the Philippines.

In a potential setback for Bush, however, Saudi Arabia was resisting a U.S. request to use a new command center on one of its bases in any air campaign, The Washington Post reported.

Quoting unidentified U.S. defense officials, it said Saudi resistance to use of the Prince Sultan Air Base had forced U.S. military planners to consider moving the operations centre to another country, which could delay any air strikes for weeks.

Saudi Arabia was Washington's foremost Arab ally in 1991 in the successful air and ground war when a U.S.-led international coalition expelled Iraqi occupying forces from Kuwait.

It is one of just three countries, along with Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, that recognized the Taliban.

In a diplomatic boost for Bush, the UAE's official news agency WAM said the government had cut ties with the Taliban after failing to persuade the Kabul government to hand over bin Laden for what it called a fair international trial.

Afghanistan, a country of rugged, inhospitable terrain, has proved a graveyard for foreign invaders. Its tribesmen defeated or held off Britain three times between 1839 and 1919, while the Muslim mujahideen (holy warriors) humiliated invaders from the Soviet Union in the 1980s when Moscow was still a superpower.

In New York, workers battling underground fires in the ruins of the World Trade Center turned to more heavy equipment in an apparent tacit admission that hope of finding alive any of the 6,333 missing was all but gone.

There were also signs the city, the financial heart of global capitalism, was slowly returning to some semblance of normalcy after the horrors and shock of the attacks. About 35,000 people chanting "USA" turned out at Shea Stadium for the city's first Major League Baseball game since the attacks. The New York Mets beat the Atlanta Braves 3-2.

Security was tightened for the Miss America pageant scheduled for Saturday evening in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

French blast toll climbs to 25

TOULOUSE, Saturday, (AFP)- The death toll from a massive blast which destroyed a petrochemical plant in this southwestern French city has climbed to 25, officials said today, after three more bodies were found in the debris.

Rescue operations resumed just before 6:00 am (0400 GMT) Saturday after being suspended for about two hours while experts checked out a damaged acid tank to ensure that it presented no danger.

Between 15 and 20 people were still missing and over 650 were in hospital following the blast, which residents initially feared was a terrorist attack similar to those carried out on targets in the United States last week.

The explosion was reported to be accidental.