Blair calls military campaign successful

Associated Press WriterKABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- U.S. warplanes renewed strikes against suspected terrorist hide-outs in eastern Afghanistan, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Monday that the war against the Taliban and al-Qaida had largely succeeded.

But leading U.S. senators said suspicion was increasing that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden had fled to Pakistan, and Blair acknowledged that military victory will not be complete until bin Laden and ousted Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar are captured.

The British leader, the most high-profile ally of President Bush in the war, was in Islamabad, Pakistan following a visit to India. The U.S.-led coalition fears tensions in the Indian subcontinent could disrupt the campaign in Afghanistan or even lead to another war between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

Blair, who was to meet Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, told a news conference that the military campaign launched after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon "had been very substantially successful."

"We have effectively shut down the al-Qaida terrorist network in Afghanistan," Blair said.

Blair described the Taliban as "the most brutal, repressive regime in the world" and said that criticism of the international community focused not on whether it was right to intervene but whether it should have been done sooner.

The international community needs to make a long-term commitment to rebuilding Afghanistan and not repeat the mistake made after the Soviet occupation ended in the 1980s, when indifference let the war-ravaged country become a failed state, exporting terror and drugs, Blair said.

"The best weapon against the extremists ultimately will be some political stability, because then the voice of the people will be heard," Blair said.

In Beijing, a six-nation group led by China and Russia took steps to assert a leading role in the region by saying it wants Afghanistan free of foreign influence.

A statement by a meeting of foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a group set up in part to fight Islamic militancy, welcomed the end of the Taliban government. But it said outside attempts to influence Afghan affairs would lead to a new crisis for the region.

"The situation in the region should be decided by the countries themselves," said Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov of Russia. The other members are Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

The statement Monday didn't single out any foreign government, but some group members view the United States or Pakistan as potential rivals.

Inside Afghanistan, U.S. forces continued to hunt down remnants of al-Qaida and the Taliban.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press agency reported that local residents said four helicopters carrying U.S. troops landed overnight in Khost and Zawar, in eastern Afghanistan, for cleanup operations close to the Pakistani border.

Heavy overnight bombing was also reported around Khost, headquarters of a former minister in the ousted Taliban regime, Jalaluddin Haqqani, who is high on the U.S. most-wanted list.

Khost was used as a training base by al-Qaida and was targeted by U.S. cruise missiles following the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998. A number of al-Qaida fighters are believed to have slipped into the area after fleeing Tora Bora, the mountain cave complex seized by U.S.-backed anti-Taliban forces last month.

Members of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee said Sunday that U.S. officials are beginning to believe bin Laden has fled Afghanistan, possibly for Pakistan.

Sen. John Edwards, traveling with other senators in the region, told "Fox News Sunday" that Uzbekistan's military intelligence service thinks bin Laden has slipped into Pakistan. Uzbekistan, like Pakistan, borders Afghanistan and has been a U.S. ally in the war.

"I fully expect the Pakistanis will do everything they can to help us locate bin Laden," said Edwards, D-N.C.

Omar is believed to have eluded forces that reportedly had him surrounded and were negotiating his surrender last week.

In Kabul, the Afghan capital, the U.N. envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, toured mine-clearance efforts at the airport and discussed civilian casualties from bombings with the new U.S. special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad.

Brahimi said he had not asked Khalilzad for the United States to halt the bombing, which the new Afghan administration has said should be better coordinated to avoid killing civilians.

"We've talked about the civilian victims of the bombings," Brahimi said. "It is a concern of his as much as it is of mine. We have no disagreement on this."