While this process moved along, diplomacy continued its rounds. Direct pressure on the Taliban had proved unsuccessful. As one NSC staff note put it, "Under the Taliban, Afghanistan is not so much a state sponsor of terrorism as it is a state sponsored by terrorists." In early 2000, the United States began a high-level effort to persuade Pakistan to use its influence over the Taliban. In January 2000, Assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth and the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, Michael Sheehan, met with General Musharraf in Islamabad, dangling before him the possibility of a presidential visit in March as a reward for Pakistani cooperation. Such a visit was coveted by Musharraf, partly as a sign of his government's legitimacy. He told the two envoys that he would meet with Mullah Omar and press him on Bin Laden. They left, however, reporting to Washington that Pakistan was unlikely in fact to do anything," given what it sees as the benefits of Taliban control of Afghanistan." President Clinton was scheduled to travel to India. The State Department felt that he should not visit India without also visiting Pakistan. The Secret Service and the CIA, however, warned in the strongest terms that visiting Pakistan would risk the President's life. Counterterrorism officials also argued that Pakistan had not done enough to merit a presidential visit. But President Clinton insisted on including Pakistan in the itinerary for his trip to South Asia. His one-day stopover on March 25, 2000, was the first time a U.S. president had been there since 1969. At his meeting with Musharraf and others, President Clinton concentrated on tensions between Pakistan and India and the dangers of nuclear proliferation, but also discussed Bin Laden. President Clinton told us that when he pulled Musharraf aside for a brief, one-on-one meeting, he pleaded with the general for help regarding Bin Laden." I offered him the moon when I went to see him, in terms of better relations with the United States, if he'd help us get Bin Laden and deal with another issue or two." The U.S. effort continued.

Question: "Why did Musharraf want the President to visit Pakistan?"

OPTIONS:
- no
- yes

Answer: "It would be "a reward for Pakistani cooperation" and be "a sign of his government's legitimacy.""

Response: yes

After the August missile strikes, diplomatic options to press the Taliban seemed no more promising than military options. The United States had issued a formal warning to the Taliban, and also to Sudan, that they would be held directly responsible for any attacks on Americans, wherever they occurred, carried out by the Bin Laden network as long as they continued to provide sanctuary to it. For a brief moment, it had seemed as if the August strikes might have shocked the Taliban into thinking of giving up Bin Laden. On August 22, the reclusive Mullah Omar told a working-level State Department official that the strikes were counterproductive but added that he would be open to a dialogue with the United States on Bin Laden's presence in Afghanistan. Meeting in Islamabad with William Milam, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Taliban delegates said it was against their culture to expel someone seeking sanctuary but asked what would happen to Bin Laden should he be sent to Saudi Arabia. Yet in September 1998, when the Saudi emissary, Prince Turki, asked Mullah Omar whether he would keep his earlier promise to expel Bin Laden, the Taliban leader said no. Both sides shouted at each other, with Mullah Omar denouncing the Saudi government. Riyadh then suspended its diplomatic relations with the Taliban regime. (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates were the only countries that recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.) Crown Prince Abdullah told President Clinton and Vice President Gore about this when he visited Washington in late September. His account confirmed reports that the U.S. government had received independently. Other efforts with the Saudi government centered on improving intelligence sharing and permitting U.S. agents to interrogate prisoners in Saudi custody. The history of such cooperation in 1997 and 1998 had been strained. Several officials told us, in particular, that the United States could not get direct access to an important al Qaeda financial official, Madani al Tayyib, who had been detained by the Saudi government in 1997.67Though U.S. officials repeatedly raised the issue, the Saudis provided limited information. In his September 1998 meeting with Crown Prince Abdullah, Vice President Gore, while thanking the Saudi government for their responsiveness, renewed the request for direct U.S. access to Tayyib. The United States never obtained this access. An NSC staff-led working group on terrorist finances asked the CIA in November 1998 to push again for access to Tayyib and to see "if it is possible to elaborate further on the ties between Usama bin Ladin and prominent individuals in Saudi Arabia, including especially the Bin Laden family." One result was two NSC-led interagency trips to Persian Gulf states in 1999 and 2000. During these trips the NSC, Treasury, and intelligence representatives spoke with Saudi officials, and later interviewed members of the Bin Laden family, about Usama's inheritance.

Question: "During the two trips taken to the Persian Gulf, the NSC spoke to officials from what country?"

OPTIONS:
- no
- yes

Answer: "United Arab Emirates"

Response: no

The factory is highly automated and designed to shift flexibly to produce many different kinds of chips to suit demand. "The diversity is the big difference with this plant," said Richard Doherty, president of Envisioneering, a research firm. "It gives IBM the capability to make so many different kinds of custom chips, and the world is going to custom chips." The 140,000-square-foot plant is a testament to advanced manufacturing technology. The 300-millimeter silicon wafers -- about the size of a standard pizza -- are shuttled around the facility in enclosed plastic pods, which ride on overhead tracks. They drop down from wires automatically into machines, sheathed in stainless steel and glass, for each stage of processing and fabrication. Throughout the 500 processing steps, which typically last 20 days, the wafers are not touched by human hands. The circuits etched into the chips are less than one thousandth the width of a human hair. Human operators are there to monitor the systems, catch errors and fine-tune the production process for maximum efficiency. Because each of the hundreds of processing machines is self-enclosed, and essentially airtight, the uniforms operators wear are less constricting than in the previous generation of chip plants, which looked like space suits. The operators at the East Fishkill factory wear light nylon uniforms, light blue shoe coverings and translucent hair nets made of paper. They look more like workers in a bakery. Yes, said Richard Brilla, director of the new facility, "but the donuts are a lot more costly here." Each wafer, holding hundreds of chips, is worth $6,000 to $10,000 apiece, depending on what insulation, circuitry and materials are used.

Question: "What are the steps that are required for every stage of fabrication?"

OPTIONS:
- no
- yes

Answer: "Measures taken of each component"

Response:
no