Osama bin Laden

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. defense secretary said Sunday that the fight against international terrorism will not be a "one-time event" but a "long-term engagement" and that U.S. military strikes against suspected terrorist targets in Sudan and Afghanistan were a part of the battle.

"We intend to take down that terror network," William Cohen said in a television interview, referring to the network of Osama bin Laden, whom the United States suspects of backing recent embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

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President Bill Clinton has banned all financial transactions between U.S. companies and bin Laden in what U.S. officials called a limited first step toward disrupting the weal|hy militant's far-flung financial empire.

Cohen denied that Americans might be in more danger because of Thursday's strikes.

"To the extent that this bombing interrupted the training activities of a terrorist network, they may be more safe," Cohen said.

"But we should understand one thing. This terrorist network has declared war against the United States and they had intended to carry out a series of attacks against Americans wherever they could find them," he said.

Cohen said the Pentagon was on a heightened state of alert but refused to speculate about possible retaliation by suspected terrorist forces.

Evidence of 'serious' damage

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson said Sunday that there was strong evidence that the U.S. cruise missiles had hit their intended targets -- in particular a pharmaceutical plant producing precursor chemicals that could be used for chemical weapons.

"We have substantial, credible evidence that we destroyed a chemical precursor site and did serious damage to the terrorist and training sites in Afghanistan ... that we were successful in wiping out a lot of bin Laden's infrastructure, which was our objective," Richardson said.

Richardson said he believed there was strong international support for the strikes and downplayed Russian President Boris Yeltsin's condemnation.

"We have a good relationship with Russia," Richardson insisted. "President Yeltsin was not pleased he was not consulted, but the Russian government -- the foreign ministry -- said that they supported the effort."