U.S. BELIEVES CHARITIES, DRUGS, WEAPONS AMONG SOURCES OF BIN LADEN'S FINANCES

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. officials believe Osama bin Laden's terrorist
network is financed largely through charities and a variety of businesses.
Government experts also suspect illegal drugs and weapons trafficking are
enriching bin Laden's group.

There are strong indications bin Laden's al-Qaida network has profited
handsomely from the opium trade, with fighters used as smugglers and to
protect smugglers, said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a member of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee.

Al-Qaida's part in drug trafficking likely continued at least until
Afghanistan's ruling Taliban cracked down on opium production last year,
Kerry said.

Opium, used in the manufacture of heroin and morphine, has an added
attraction for terrorists because such drugs head to the United States and
lead to problems such as addiction and crime, he said.

"That's part of their revenge on the world," Kerry said. "Get as many
people drugged out and screwed up as you can."

Jonathan Winer, deputy U.S. assistant secretary of state for international
enforcement in the Clinton administration, said those who deal in drugs
usually also traffic in guns, although the extent to which bin Laden is
profiting from the gun trade is unknown.

The world is now awash in light weapons, making their sale less profitable,
Winer said. The question then becomes whether bin Laden is trafficking in
higher-powered weapons, he said.

U.S. investigators are tracking the money behind bin Laden and al- Qaida,
prime suspects in last week's terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon.

A new multiagency task force pursuing terrorist finances will go beyond bin
Laden's group, Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Rob Nichols said.

"Our mission is threefold. One, deny terrorist groups access to the
international financial system. Two, impair the ability of terrorists to
raise funds. And three, expose, isolate and incapacitate the financial
holdings of terrorists," Nichols said.

Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said the government is investigating
whether terrorists tried to profit from stock and options trading before
the suicide hijackings of commercial airliners on Sept. 11. Tracing such
transactions to people behind the hijackings could be very difficult, he
told the Senate Banking Committee.

The United States believes bin Laden is tapping several sources of finance,
but not his own fortune. Whatever is left of an estimated $300 million he
inherited from his family, it is considered unlikely that bin Laden is
using it for al-Qaida's activities.

Instead, government officials believe he is drawing much of his cash from
charities and wealthy individuals, including some in the United States.

The U.S. government believes all the money raised here is sent abroad. How
it gets there is a key part of the investigation. Islamic charities, as
religious organizations, do not have to disclose the sources or
destinations of their fund raising.

Kerry said U.S. efforts to track bin Laden's finances may be complicated by
his network's use of the "hawala" system, an underground money system that
in part lets people in different countries swap cash, eliminating the need
for cross-border transfers and avoiding exchange laws.

According to testimony in this year's trial of men charged in the 1998
bombing of U.S. embassies in Africa, during bin Laden's years in Sudan he
ran several businesses that served the dual purposes of raising cash and
procuring equipment needed by al-Qaida.