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KABUL, April 27: US. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ended a visit to the Afghan capital on Saturday and heard a warning from Afghan leader Hamid Karzai that Taliban and al Qaeda forces were likely to come out of hiding soon and stage further attacks.
On a day-long visit marred by security scares, Rumsfeld delivered his own warning that U.S.-led forces were ready to “go after” any al Qaeda and Taliban guerrillas who regrouped to launch a spring offensive in Afghanistan.
“No doubt some people in hiding may try to commit acts of terrorism here and there. They will try to regroup,” Karzai told a joint news conference with Rumsfeld.
Addressing charges that rebels were using bases across the border in Pakistan to escape U.S. forces, Rumsfeld praised cooperation from President Pervez Musharaff but added: “It is impossible to seal completely the Afghanistan border with Pakistan. But it is not impossible to find concentrations of Taliban and go after them.”
In meetings with U.S. and other Western troops at nearby Bagram Air Base, Rumsfeld said the coalition needed to finish the job of eliminating terrorism around the world urgently.
AID TO PHILIPPINES: The United States would consider extending further military aid to the Philippines to deny Osama bin Laden a new Southeast Asian base from which to hatch future terror attacks, Washington’s military chief said Saturday.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers said that with the disruption of the al Qaeda network’s activities in Afghanistan, bin Laden’s organization was now on the lookout for new bases and “it could be here” or in the Middle East.
“We... know that the al Qaeda is looking for other places to train and plan operations. They can’t do that inside Afghanistan anymore, they’ve been disrupted there.
“So to be effective they have to have a training location and they have to have a place where they can plan and gather,” he said. “We have to be very cautious and very vigilant on where that might be. It could be here as well as in other places in the Middle East,” Myers said.
About a thousand US troops are now in the Philippines, including 160 Special Forces men on the southern island of Basilan, for a six-month project to train and advise Filipino troops going after the Abu Sayyaf, a Muslim rebel group described as local al-Qaeda proxies.
Myers met late Friday with Philiwho has publicly called for more counter-terrorist joint military training outside Basilan.
“The US government would be very receptive to requests from the Philippine government for future training assistance and advisory roles for the US armed” he told a news conference.
But he denied reports that the two governments are considering allowing US forces to join Filipino troops in combat patrols on Basilan, saying they were only there to train and advise the local soldiers.
The ge noted that there has been a “10-fold increase” in US military assistance to Manila, its former colony, since Arroyo met with US President George W. Bush in Washington in November.
Myers, on the first leg of a three-nation tour through Asia, satheast Asia, but that “at the current time” the US saw no need to deploy American troops elsewhere in Southeast Asia, home to more than 200 million Muslims.
He declined to comment on allegations that the al Qaeda maintained some training camps Washington thought Jakarta was giving its full cooperation in the fight against terror, saying the Pentagon still has to assess the results of a recent US defense department mission to that country.
Myers also stressed “there’s absolutely no inhe Philippines after vacating two major facilities in the country in 1992.—AFP
