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FROM:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54813-2002Jun3.html
Al
Qaeda Active, Rumsfeld Says
Pentagon Chief Finds No Sign Of Bin Laden Giving Direction
By
Vernon Loeb and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, June 4, 2002; Page A01
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that Saudi extremist
Osama bin Laden does not seem to be formally directing al Qaeda operations,
even though there is "no doubt" the terrorist network remains
active around the globe.
"My
guess is, if he were active, we would know it -- we would have some
visible sense of it, which we haven't seem to have had, for some reason,"
Rumsfeld said.
Rumsfeld
said he did not know whether bin Laden is keeping a low profile for
security reasons, suffering from an illness, or dead. But whatever his
fate, he said, the U.S. government has evidence showing that other al
Qaeda leaders continue raising money and communicating with one another,
albeit with greater difficulty due to losses in Afghanistan and thousands
of arrests worldwide.
"We
know they're in enough countries and have enough money and have enough
leadership that you've got to expect they, in fact, are going to be
back again," Rumsfeld said in an interview at the Pentagon with
Washington Post reporters and editors. "There have to be six, eight,
10, 12, 15 people who know where the bank accounts are, who know people
who were trained, who know what their techniques are, who can pick it
up."
Rumsfeld's
comments on bin Laden and the state of al Qaeda's leadership were his
most extensive in months and came after a series of warnings from the
Bush administration in recent weeks about the likelihood of future terrorist
attacks. Despite the military's success at toppling the Taliban movement
from power in Afghanistan and eliminating al Qaeda sanctuaries in that
country, Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials acknowledge
that U.S. troops alone cannot prevent al Qaeda from staging new attacks.
A
senior intelligence official agreed with Rumsfeld's assessment of bin
Laden's current activity but said that the consensus among U.S. intelligence
agencies is that bin Laden is alive and has "intentionally lowered
his profile for security reasons." Most intelligence analysts,
the official said, believe bin Laden is in either Afghanistan or Pakistan.
Rumsfeld
again acknowledged that large numbers of al Qaeda fighters fled Afghanistan
and "got away" across the Pakistani border. "It has been
our worry for the last six months that the border is porous, that people
move back and forth going both ways, and that there are pockets of al
Qaeda and Taliban still floating around on both sides," he said.
Rumsfeld
said the Pakistani military has deployed forces along the border to
help hunt down al Qaeda and Taliban remnants. For the most part, those
forces remain in place, Rumsfeld said, despite escalating tensions between
Pakistan and India over the disputed territory of Kashmir.
"The
Pakistanis have moved away some small elements but not major forces
yet -- some reconnaissance people and some communications people, nothing
big," Rumsfeld said. "The forces are still reasonably in place
along the Afghan border."
Rumsfeld
said finding people in that remote, mountainous region is like finding
"a needle in a haystack" and acknowledged that recent sweeps
by U.S. and allied forces of suspected al Qaeda redoubts along the border
have turned up "a lot more materiel than people."
"A
lot of groups are out making sweeps and they're discovering large caches
of weapons, big numbers of rockets, small arms, ammunition, in some
cases some armored personnel carriers," he said. "So they're
having good success. There are probably about four or five activities
either just finishing or underway."
About
150 soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division were sent out on Sunday
to search a suspected former al Qaeda training camp east of Jalalabad,
near the Pakistan border, said Army Maj. Bryan Hilferty, a military
spokesman at Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
The
soldiers closed four caves and returned to Bagram yesterday morning,
Hilferty said. None of the caves or buildings searched by the troops
appeared to have been occupied for weeks. Soldiers reported finding
some documents and a small pile of ammunition, and said they blew up
entrances to the caves to seal them off and prevent them from being
used again.
Despite
the relative quiet in Afghanistan, the U.S. military is bracing for
increased turmoil there as a loya jirga, or grand council, is convened
next week to pick a new central government, said one U.S. official.
The fear is that various regional commanders could rise up in opposition
to Hamid Karzai, the U.S.-backed interim leader of Afghanistan, and
others allied with him if they feel inadequately represented in a new
government.
"There
are a lot of people with a great deal to lose in the loya jirga,"
the official said.
On
Iraq, Rumsfeld said that President Saddam Hussein's government is more
of a threat now than it was in December 1998, when U.N. weapons inspectors
left Iraq in advance of U.S. and British airstrikes. "There's no
question but that their [weapons of mass destruction] program and their
military capabilities are going to evolve in ways that are favorable
to them," he said.
But
Rumsfeld made it clear that an invasion of Iraq would represent a major
undertaking for the U.S. military. Asked about military strategists
who have called toppling Hussein a "cakewalk," Rumsfeld strongly
disagreed.
"Listen,
nothing is a cakewalk," he said. "Everything is unpredictable,
and life is hard. Those folks have weapons that they'll use, and anyone
who thinks it's a cakewalk isn't right."
He
also took exception to those who have argued that large numbers of Iraqi
troops and civilians would rise up in support of U.S. troops in the
event of an invasion. Rumsfeld said it is logical to assume that some
forces would surrender, noting that 80,000 Iraqi troops surrendered
during a four- or five-day period in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
But
that is different than mass insurrection, he said. "Will they rise
up?" he asked. "I think that's not likely. People who rise
up get killed."
©
2002 The Washington Post Company.
FROM:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54813-2002Jun3.html
