I have never tried to deceive.”Yesterday signs were growing that a majority of nine Republicans and seven Democrats on the Committee would vote to send the nomination to a final vote on the Senate floor. The Democrats are solidly behind him, while two or three Republicans, including the Committee’s chairwoman Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas, seemed to be leaning his way.Dr Foster had been reduced to a “cardboard caricature” and a “pawn in our abortion debate,” Ms Kassebaum, herself a supporter of abortion rights, said in her opening statement, while the liberal Vermont Republican James Jeffords has indicated he will support Dr Foster.In the trickiest position of all, however, was Bill Frist, who before his election to the Senate was a prominent Nashville surgeon and close professional colleague of Dr Foster. “I shouldn’t have guessed,” Dr Foster conceded yesterday, “That was a mistake, but an honest mistake. Immediately after his nomination in February, he spoke of “one or two” abortions, before adjusting that to “several,” and finally to a documented count of 39. They were, he explained yesterday, to preserve the health of patients.And in a country almost as obsessed with statistical precision as it is divided on the issue of abortion itself, he has committed the scarcely lesser sin of getting confused over the figures.

It is about my qualifications and credentials to serve as Surgeon-General.”
By common consent those credentials are excellent. Unfortunately and inevitably, however, during an eminent career spanning almost four decades and the delivery of tens of thousands of babies, Mr Foster has also performed some abortions. Both were due to appear before a federal magistrate late yesterday.Two other friends of McVeigh, the brothers Terry and James Nichols, are also in custody, but on explosives charges thus far not directly related to the Oklahoma City bombing. James Nichols, detained on 21 April at his farm in Michigan, was due to go before a bail hearing yesterday.The official death toll of the disaster has now risen to 146 and rescuers say around 20 people are still unaccounted for.. Dr Henry Foster, President Clinton’s controversial nominee for US Surgeon- General, yesterday put up a strong performance as Senate Committee hearings began yesterday, but his ultimate confirmation is still hostage to the merciless politics of abortion and the Republican presidential campaign.

Self-assured, and remarkably relaxed for a man in the eye of so vicious a storm, the 61-year-old obstetrics and gynaecology professor from Tennessee insisted to the Senate Labour and Human Resources Committee that its debate was “not about abortion, nor about my credibility. The white 1981 Thunderbird, registered in Land’s name and carrying Arizona number plates, has been placed by witnesses near the Alfred P Murrah building in Oklahoma City shortly before the explosion.Acting on an FBI alert, Missouri state patrol officers spotted the vehicle on Monday outside the motel, where Land and Jacks were arrested at 6.45am the next day. Life in the remote high desert city on the old Route 66 seems to have been drab and aimless. Neighbours of Jacks and Land yesterday remembered them as “weird, they just sat around drinking”.But last month they drove to Oklahoma, and on the day of the bombing they are believed to have checked in to a motel in Perry, 60 miles north of Oklahoma City, where McVeigh was taken into custody for a traffic and firearms offence barely an hour after the explosion.The key to what may prove a vital break in the worst ever terrorism case on US soil was their car. 2, the quarry of the biggest US manhunt in decades, Land is tanned and powerfully built.

As the FBI description of him suggested, he also lifts weights. He does not, however, have a tattoo on his arm, as was claimed in the initial identikit on 21 April.At a White House briefing, the Attorney General, Janet Reno, said Land and Jacks were “co-operating” with investigators. In sharp contrast to McVeigh, 27, who claims to be a political prisoner and refuses to answer questions, Land and Jacks have agreed to be interviewed and have permitted their property to be searched.Like McVeigh, both men lived for a spell in Kingman, Arizona, now a focus of investigators who have questioned a former army colleague of McVeigh, Michael Fortier. Gary Allen Land and Robert Jacks were arrested at dawn in a motel at Carthage, Missouri, about 250 miles north-east of Oklahoma City.

Jacks is said to be in his 50s, but Land is aged 35 and bears a strong physical resemblance to the portraits of the second suspect issued by the authorities after the bombing.
Like John Doe No. The FBI yesterday detained two more men as “material witnesses” in the Oklahoma City bombing – both said to be associates of arrested suspect, Timothy McVeigh, and one of them a clear candidate to be the mysterious “John Doe No 2″ sought by the authorities since the blast on 19 April. Russian troops across Chechnya say they are shot at night and, complaining of sniper and machine-gun fire, grow visibly tense as night falls. They stay there about five hours and then come back.”As the visit to Moscow of President Bill Clinton, Prime Minister John Major, and other leaders grows nearer, Chechen rebels have intensified their resistance with ambushes and hit-and-run attacks.