May 29, 2002	Wednesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 16,1423

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NEW YORK, May 28: The US intelligence reports indicate that Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, now in Pakistan, are plotting terrorist attacks, including car and suicide bombings, to disrupt the selection of a national government in Kabul next month, The New York Times said in a report on Monday.

The commander of the US-led forces, Maj-Gen Franklin L. Hagenbeck, told the paper in an interview that virtually the entire senior leadership of Al Qaeda and Taliban had been driven out of eastern Afghanistan. The leadership, he added, was now operating with the help of some 1,000 non-Afghan fighters in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

“We know that they are there and have a capability to do

harm to this country (Afghanistan),” Gen Hagenbeck said. “Our job is to deny them the freedom of movement and sanctuary.”

He echoed a concern voiced in Washington that tensions between India and Pakistan could delay Pakistan’s military operations in the tribal areas.

Gen Hagenbeck also said that several recent raids on compounds in the Tailban’s spiritual base in southern Afghanistan had been intended to break up groups that had been plotting terrorist attacks against coalition forces and their Afghan allies.

However, the paper said, residents of those villages asserted that the American forces were mistaken about the presence of terrorist groups, and said that innocent people had been killed or taken into custody in the raids.

Gen Hagenbeck would not say whether Pakistan had begun pulling back troops from the border. But the paper said that he expressed confidence that President Pervez Musharraf would fulfil a pledge to

eliminate the Al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuaries in the tribal region.

“I have no concern that they are not going to do what they’ve said they will do,” Gen Hagenbeck said in his office at this former Soviet base, now the headquarters for more than 10,000 allied troops in Afghanistan. “They are interested in ridding western Pakistan of Al Qaeda. With what is currently going on in India, I don’t know what the timing’s going to be.”

There have been reports from Pakistan that Osama bin Laden had been seen in the tribal areas as recently as last month, the paper said.

But Gen Hagenbeck told the Times he had no solid information on the whereabouts of Osama or Mulla Omar.