Africa Bombings: Quick Justice Unlikely

President Clinton is offering a $2 million dollar reward and has vowed that the bombers of U.S. embassies in Africa will be brought to justice. At the same time, Tanzanian authorities on Monday rounded up what appear to be "the usual suspects". But don't expect to see this case resolved any time soon. "The U.S. has a mixed record in solving terrorist attacks outside our borders," says TIME correspondent Douglas Waller. Arrests have been made in only 8 of the 24 major attacks against American targets since 1979, and Washington has retaliated militarily only once. "Even in the cases that have been solved, the process has often taken four or five years," Waller adds.

Although the intelligence community hasn't ruled out any possibility, they're focusing attention on radical Islamic groups who've committed such acts in the past. "But remember," cautions Waller, "the perpetrators very often turn out to be someone other than the first suspects." The arrests in Tanzania of three groups of foreign nationals appears, at this stage, to be a speculative sweep. On the positive side, unlike the frustrating investigation into the 1996 attack on U.S. personnel in Saudi Arabia, officials believe that local authorities will more fully cooperate. But perhaps the most important factor is Washington's unimpeachable record of persistence -- the U.S. has never closed the file on a terrorist case.