WASHINGTON, March 15: A poll conducted by the MSNBC News on Tuesday showed that majority of Americans still believe that America will ultimately catch Osama bin Laden.

As many as 54 per cent of 251,445 respondents who had participated in the poll by noon on Monday said they believed ‘without doubt’ that America would catch the Al Qaeda leader.

But 21 per cent respondents said Osama would never be caught while 25 per cent were not sure.

The questionnaire was distributed along with a report quoting Pakistani and American officials as saying that the hunt for top Al Qaida and Taliban leaders would continue, but the trail was cold.

The report also quoted President Pervez Musharraf as saying in an interview that his forces believed they had nearly hunted down Osama about 10 months ago, but had since lost track of him.

In Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said he did not have any information on Gen. Musharraf’s disclosure. But he said Osama ‘remains a high priority just like other Al Qaeda leaders’.

“He is someone that has been on the run,” McClellan said. “We are dismantling the Al Qaeda network. We have made important progress, but the war on terrorism continues. And we will stay on the offensive and take the fight to the enemy so we don’t have to fight them here at home.”

But the report pointed out that the new operational commander for US troops in Afghanistan played down the unsuccessful hunt, saying that bolstering the re-emerging government of President Hamid Karzai was their immediate priority.

Maj-Gen Jason Kamiya took command of the 18,000-strong US-led coalition in Afghanistan on Tuesday as American troops based in Europe rotate into the country ahead of parliamentary elections expected in September.

“We will continue to focus our energy, number one, on supporting the government of Afghanistan’s vision,” Gen. Kamiya said. “We have the election coming up ... and that will be one of our major focuses.

“The success of this mission should not be predicated upon the amount of fugitives or threat groups we remove,” he added. “Instead it should be focused on increasing the capacity, increasing the reach of the Afghan central government.”

But the overall US commander in Afghanistan, Lt-Gen David Barno, told reporters that there were no leads into Osama’s whereabouts.

“We don’t know where he is. If we had a good definition we’d obviously have apprehended him,” Barno said of the Al Qaeda leader.

“We will be successful eventually, but it is a very, very difficult challenge given the immensity of the territory involved, the mountainous terrain, the tough weather,” Gen. Barno said.