Tuesday October 16 8:57 AM ET

Daschle Feels Pressure to Get Lawmakers Out of Town

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle Tuesday acknowledged pressure from fellow lawmakers to wrap up the nation's business quickly and get out of town for fear of becoming a terror target.

``I think there is a lot of question about how we ought to proceed,'' said the South Dakota Democrat, whose aides opened a letter in his offices Monday that preliminary tests showed was laced with anthrax bacteria.

``I think we have a job to do that may require presence here, at least on and off again, as we go through the balance of this year,'' he added in an interview on NBC's ``Today'' program.

``We haven't made any decision but we're going to take every safety precaution we possibly can,'' Daschle said.

Daschle was the first person in Washington or in a national leadership position to become a known target of the mailed bacterium.

But Washington was the fourth spot where anthrax has been detected since more than 5,000 people were killed in Sept. 11 attacks that leveled the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon (news - web sites). In Florida, one person has died of an inhaled form of the bacterium, sent to America Media Inc. in Boca Raton.

The latest case involved an ABC New employee's 7-month-old child, who officials said had tested positive for a type of anthrax contracted through breaks in the skin. ABC News President David Westin said the child developed a rash soon after visiting the network's Manhattan headquarters on Sept. 28.

Capitol police, after conducting two tests on the material sent to Daschle, quarantined his personal office, administered antibiotics to about 50 staff members, halted mail deliveries to House of Representatives and Senate offices and canceled tours of Congress.

President Bush (news - web sites) said Tuesday that he would not be surprised if Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, were behind the anthrax mailings. ``I wouldn't put it past him but we don't have hard evidence yet,'' Bush said.

Daschle struck a more defiant note in other early-morning television shows.

``We've got to face this; we've got to do the right thing. Democracy cannot be undermined and we're not going to let it happen,'' he said on CBS's ``Early Show.''

``We believe strongly in what it is we're doing,'' Daschle added on CNN. ``And we're going to continue to do it as effectively as we know how to do it.''

But he acknowledged on ABC's ``Good Morning America'' that Congress was ``not functioning on all eight cylinders at this point.''

``But we are functioning and we'll continue to do so so long as there's work to do,'' he said.

-- Anonymous, October 16, 2001