NEW YORK, Oct 25: US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Wednesday that the US forces might not catch America’s number one enemy, Osama bin Laden. However, he predicted that the Taliban regime harbouring bin Laden would be toppled.

“Yes, I think there will be a post-Taliban Afghanistan,” Rumsfeld told USA Today in an interview. “That is easier than finding a single person.”

He added that the United States should not be responsible for forming a new government. Since the bombing began on Oct 7, President Bush has described the US military campaign as only one part of an international effort to root out terrorists. Bush said on Wednesday that the military was slowly but surely encircling the terrorists.

Rumsfeld told the paper it would be very difficult to capture or kill Osama.

“It’s a big world,” he said. “There are lots of countries. He’s got a lot of money. He’s got a lot of people who support him and I just don’t know whether we’ll be successful. Clearly, it would be highly desirable to find him.” But he said in any event Osama’s terrorist network would carry on without him. “If he were gone tomorrow, the same problem would exist.” Rumsfeld has said repeatedly that rooting out terrorism is a long-term project that will last for years and has compared it to the Cold War, which lasted half a century.

Rumsfeld said that the Taliban were proving to be a formidable foe: “These are very tough people... They’ve made careers out of fighting, and they’re not going to roll over.”

Pentagon officials warned on Wednesday that they had received intelligence reports indicating that the Taliban might poison humanitarian food supplies and blame the US for resulting sickness and death.

US forces have dropped 785,000 packets of daily rations since the air war began, and relief organizations are also distributing food. Now those supplies could be used against the Afghan people and US efforts to win their hearts and minds, said Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Rumsfeld said toppling the Taliban would not necessarily mean a united Afghanistan with a stable government. A US-backed faction could control the capital, Kabul, and another perhaps even the Taliban could control the southern city of Kandahar, he said.