NEW YORK, April 2: To the ‘surprise and dismay’ of the American intelligence agencies, Al Qaeda leadership has reconstituted itself by creating a new generation of leaders who have taken control of the organisation’s network, the New York Times said in a front-page article on Monday.

That reassessment, the newspaper said, had brought new urgency to joint Pakistani and American intelligence operations in Pakistan, strengthening the belief that dismantling Al Qaeda’s infrastructure there could disrupt nascent large-scale terrorist plots that might already be under way.

The Times said: “It has been known that American officials were focusing on a band of Al Qaeda training camps in Pakistan’s remote mountains, but a clearer picture is emerging about those who are running the camps and thought to be involved in plotting attacks.

“American, European and Pakistani authorities have for months been piecing together a picture of the new leadership, based in part on evidence gathered during terrorism investigations in the past two years. Particularly important have been interrogations of suspects and material evidence connected to a plot British and American investigators said they averted last summer to destroy multiple commercial airliners after takeoff from London.”

The new leaders rose from within the organisation after the death or capture of the operatives that built Al Qaeda before the Sept 11, 2001, rebounding from the American-led offensive against the organisation, The New York Times said.

Although the core leadership was weakened in the counterterrorism campaign begun after the Sept 11 attacks, intelligence officials now believed it was not as crippling as once thought, the newspaper said.

Intelligence officials have received new information about Al Qaeda’s structure through intercepted communication among operatives in Pakistan’s tribal areas, although they said the group had a complex network of human couriers to evade electronic eavesdropping, the Times alleged.

The investigation into the airline plot had led officials to conclude that an Egyptian paramilitary commander, Abu Ubaidah Al Masri, was the Qaeda operative orchestrating the attack, US officials told the newspaper.

In February, US Central Intelligence Agency Deputy Director Stephen R. Kappes accompanied Vice-President Dick Cheney to Islamabad to present President Pervez Musharraf with intelligence on Al Qaeda’s growing abilities and to develop a strategy to strike at training camps, the newspaper said, citing American intelligence officials.