The United States stepped up its military buildup on Saturday for a looming assault against the Islamic rulers of Afghanistan who refuse to surrender Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in last week's attack on America.

Planes lumbered into the air from bases in the American heartland on their way to the Gulf and the Indian Ocean and warships were also moving in the biggest US military mobilization since the 1991 Gulf War.

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. In all, more than 6,800 people are reported missing or dead in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Afghanistan's ruling Taliban said its forces had shot down an unmanned spy plane and a helicopter in areas where opposition fighters have launched an attack and are reporting sweeping advances.

President George W. Bush held a strategy session with top aides, telephoned Russian President Vladimir Putin and prepared to sign an executive order freezing the US assets of a list of groups and individuals who would be deemed "terrorists".

The Pentagon had no comment on reports of a spy plane downed in Afghanistan. Washington frequently uses "drones" to fly missions over Iraq, but the aircraft do not generally have defensive capabilities and several have been shot down.

Bush, in his weekly radio address to Americans, sought to bolster confidence in the US 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 the World Trade Center and the Pentagon pummeled the US economy this week, leading a growing number of analysts to conclude the United States has entered a recession.

ECONOMY IN SHOCK

"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's conversation with Putin was "lengthy and constructive" according to White House officials. Moscow has condemned last week's attacks but urged caution in responding and is not pleased by US overtures to the former Soviet republics of Central Asia for military cooperation.

The Taliban on Friday rejected an ultimatum from the US president to hand over bin Laden, based in Afghanistan as their "guest," without evidence that the Saudi-born militant masterminded the hijacked airliner attacks.

Opposition forces who have been fighting the Taliban in northern Afghanistan said their mainly minority ethnic Uzbek forces had made advances, capturing prisoners and arms in an offensive timed to coincide with Washington's buildup.

"We are busy fighting," Gen. Rashid Dostum told reporTers in Tehran by satellite telephone. "Our advances have been good. We have taken a lot of their trenches, prisoners and seized a lot of their arms."

US 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.

NAVY STEAMS TO ATTACK ZONE

The US 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.

In Liege, Belgium, European finance ministers met and agreed to speed up ratification of an existing UN resolution calling for the freezing of assets of the Taliban.

Germany's central bank president Ernst Welteke said officials wanted to investigate reports that those who planned the attacks also profited by manipulating airline and insurance shares. He said there were also signs of suspicious dealings in gold and oil around the time of the attacks.

"There are ever clearer signs that there were activities on international financial markets which must have been carried out with the necessary expert knowledge," Welteke said.

Tens of thousands of Afghans have fled cities and towns and headed for the relative safety of the countryside in anticipation of a US military strike after the attacks.

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, said 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 Center 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.

Muslim Turkey, a NATO member, and the Philippines both pledged logistical support to the United States on Saturday in any response to the attacks.

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

SAUDIS NOT COOPERATING

Quoting unidentified US defense officials, it said Saudi resistance to use of the Prince Sultan Air Base had forced US military planners to consider moving the operations center 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 US-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.

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