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WASHINGTON, Aug 6: Washington’s top general said on Tuesday US forces were pressing ahead with their hunt for Osama bin Laden in the belief he may he hiding along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Gen Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there remained some question as to whether Osama is still alive.
“If he’s alive, a lot of people believe that the region he is in is in that border area where the terrain is very rugged and where he might find people sympathetic to his outlook on life,” Gen Myers told a Pentagon briefing.
“It’s one of those things, just like Saddam Hussein, that we’ll continue to keep pressure on those kind of individuals. It’s important,” said the general, who visited Pakistan and Afghanistan last week on a trip that also took him to Iraq and India.
Gen Myers also said the capture of Osama or Ayman al Zawahri, the Al Qaeda network’s second-ranking official, “would not end the threat from Al Qaeda”.
“They have morphed into an organization that is not as hierarchical as it previously was, more of a network today,” Richard Myers said.
The CIA had said on Monday a technical analysis of an audiotape broadcast on Sunday showed it likely was the voice of Ayman Zawahri.
DETAINED AL QAEDA MEMBERS: US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Wednesday he saw no chance that Iran would turn over to the United States any detained members of the Al Qaeda network.
The New York Times on Saturday quoted a US official as saying Washington had approached Tehran with a request to hand over Al Qaeda members in its custody, including Saif al Adel, an Egyptian thought to be Al Qaeda’s security chief.
Iran said on Monday it would not hand over any detained Al Qaeda members to Washington and denied trying to strike a prisoner exchange deal. Iran publicly acknowledged last month that it was holding some senior Al Qaeda figures and said it planned to extradite some of them to “friendly countries”.
“To the extent they would be handed over to us, it would be excellent,” Mr Rumsfeld said. “The chances of that happening, apparently, are about zero.
“To the extent that they might be handed over to some country of their nationality, presuming it’s a country that has a minimum of high regard for al Qaeda, that would be a good thing. And how it will play out remains to be seen,” he added.
US military officials in Iraq have expressed optimism about finding Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of a July 22 raid staged by US Army soldiers and special forces troops in which the toppled Iraqi president’s formerly powerful sons, Uday and Qusay, were killed.
Mr Rumsfeld sounded a note of caution.
“You’ve got to appreciate (that) the folks that are trying to find him are enthusiastic, and they think they’re getting closer. And I’m for that. I like that enthusiasm,” the defence secretary said.
“But if you ask me ‘Are we getting closer?’, I’ll say, ‘I’ll let you know when we catch him.’ Until you have him, you don’t have him. And we need to find him, and we’re going to find him.”—Reuters
