Al-Qaeda leaders are in Pakistan: US

US intelligence chief John Negroponte has identified Pakistan as the hub of a worldwide web of Al-Qaeda connections

WASHINGTON: Al-Qaeda’s leaders are holed up in a secure hide-out in Pakistan, from which they are revitalizing their bruised but resilient network, US intelligence chief John Negroponte said on Thursday.   

In an unusually direct statement on the whereabouts of the militant group’s top echelon, Negroponte told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that Pakistan is the centre of a web of Al-Qaeda connections that stretches across the globe into Europe.

“Al-Qaeda is the terrorist organisation that poses the greatest threat to US interests,” the US director of national intelligence said in his annual assessment of worldwide threats against the United States and its interests.

“They are cultivating stronger operational connections and relationships that radiate outward from their leaders’ secure hide-out in Pakistan to affiliates throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe,” he said.

It appeared to be the first time in congressional testimony that Negroponte has singled out Pakistan as the locale for the headquarters of the network. It is accused of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,000 people in 2001.

Up to now, US officials have said that Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri are hiding somewhere along the rugged mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.   

Negroponte did not cite bin Laden or Zawahri by name and did not say where in Pakistan US intelligence believes Al-Qaeda leaders are hiding.

Negroponte, who became US intelligence chief in April 2005 and will soon leave to become deputy secretary of state, told the same panel a year ago that Al-Qaeda’s leadership posed a threat to the United States from bases in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area.   

“We have captured or killed numerous senior Al-Qaeda operatives, but Al-Qaeda’s core elements are resilient. They continue to plot attacks against our homeland and other targets with the objective of inflicting mass casualties,” he said.

US officials have long complained about Islamist militant activity in Pakistan, which has been blamed as a source of increasing Taliban and Al-Qaeda attacks in neighbouring Afghanistan.   

“Pakistan is our partner in the war on terror and has captured several Al-Qaeda leaders. However, it is also a major source of Islamic extremism,” Negroponte said in written testimony to the panel. “Eliminating the safe haven that the Taliban and other extremists have found in Pakistan’s tribal areas is not sufficient to end the insurgency in Afghanistan but it is necessary.”

He noted the political problems facing Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf due to a potential for tribal rebellion and a backlash by Islamic political parties opposed to the US military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq.   “With elections expected later this year, the situation will become even more challenging for President Musharraf and for the US,” Negroponte said.