WASHINGTON, May 30: CIA chief Michael Hayden has said that Al Qaeda has been weakened in its ‘presumed’ safe havens along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

In Iraq and Saudi Arabia, the terrorist network has been defeated while in Pakistan’s tribal belt it is on the defensive, Mr Hayden told The Washington Post in an interview published on Friday.

The newspaper noted that Mr Hayden was “in a strikingly upbeat” mood while talking about Al Qaeda’s defeat and America’s success.

Earlier, senior Bush administration officials had said that they were watching political developments in Pakistan with apprehension, worried that the country’s new government would not be as tolerant of occasional air-strikes on targets inside their borders as was the government of President Pervez Musharraf.

But Mr Hayden gave the impression that Washington also had a similar agreement with new rulers. He did not discuss those agreements, but said: “We are comfortable with the authorities we have.”

He conceded that Al Qaeda had faced setbacks in Fata, thanks to US air-strikes at suspected terrorist targets.

“The ability to kill and capture key members of Al Qaeda continues, and keeps them off balance – even in their best safe haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border,” he said.

The CIA chief said that US intelligence agencies had carried out several attacks in Fata since January, using unmanned aircraft to strike safe houses and these attacks had played a key role in putting Al Qaeda on the defensive.

Since the start of the year, he pointed out, Al Qaeda’s leadership had lost three senior men, including the two who succumbed to violence, an apparent reference to Predator strikes that killed Abu Laith al-Libi and Abu Sulayman al-Jazairi in Pakistan.

He also cited a blow against “training activity” in the region. “Those are the kinds of things that delay and disrupt Al Qaeda’a planning.” In Iraq, Mr Hayden said he was encouraged by US success against Al Qaeda’s affiliates and by what he described as the rising competence of the Iraqi military and a growing antipathy toward jihadism.