26 October 2004	Tuesday	11 Ramazan 1425

WASHINGTON, Oct 25: US President George Bush has touted the capture or killing of 75 per cent of Al Qaeda's leaders to show US voters the war on terror's progress, but intelligence experts say the group's senior ranks have been filled by new people.

"We're making progress, three-quarters of Al-Qaeda leaders have been brought to justice," Mr Bush said in the last televised election debate against Democratic challenger John Kerry on Oct 13.

Mr Kerry did not question the president's figure but vowed to conduct an aggressive battle against Osama bin Laden's network.

"I will hunt them down, and we'll kill them, we'll capture them. We'll do whatever is necessary to be safe," the Massachusetts senator said.

Melvin Goodman, a national security expert at the Center for International Policy, questioned Mr Bush's figure. "The president throws numbers around," Mr Goodman said.

The US intelligence community is "not even sure about the number of actual Al-Qaeda (members)," he said, adding: "We don't know the real number."

A US counter-terrorism official said Mr Bush's 75 percent figure represents Al-Qaeda's pre-Sept 11 leadership.

The captured or dead leaders have partly been replaced and Al Qaeda's leadership has not necessarily been reduced to 25 percent, the official said. There have been high-profile arrests but top Al Qaeda figures remain on the run.

Ramzi bin al Shaiba, an accused co-conspirator in the Sept 11 attacks on New York and Washington, and Al Qaeda number three Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are among the most prominent members to have been captured.

"Seventy-five percent of the known leadership of that time (Sept 11, 2201) has been probably eliminated, but of course it has been devolved and replaced," said Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA official and a private security consultant.

"The organization is probably no smaller overall than it was on Sept 11, because they have been able to attract new recruits since Sept 11, and particularly since the war in Iraq," Mr Cannistraro said. Al Qaeda's structure has also changed since the attacks, he said.

"The organization is more dispersed and disseminated and it probably has less central command now because the leaders Zawahiri and Osama himself are hiding," Mr Cannistraro said.

"It makes it more difficult for them to control and command an organization," he added. "There is maybe a devolution of authority to lower ranks, but it is in fact not true to say that 75 percent has been destroyed." He added that the figure is not a reliable measure to show progress in the "war against terrorism".

"It is of course the wrong way of thinking of it," he said. "It is not a mechanistic process. These are people who come from an environment which is perpetuated by our actions and that environment creates new terrorists." -AFP