General, others say al-Qaida 'broken'

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Senior Bush administration officials have warned in recent weeks that al-Qaida is regrouping for another massive attack, its agents bent on acquiring nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in a nightmare scenario that could dwarf the horror of Sept. 11, 2001.

But in Pakistan and Afghanistan -- where Osama bin Laden and his chief deputy are believed to be hiding -- intelligence agents, politicians and a top U.S. general paint a different picture.

They say a relentless military crackdown, the arrests last summer of several men allegedly involved in plans to launch attacks on U.S. financial institutions, and the killing in September of a top Pakistani al-Qaida suspect wanted in a number of attacks -- including the 2002 killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and two failed assassination attempts against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf -- have effectively decapitated al-Qaida.

Because of the secretive and underground nature of cells that operate throughout the world, it cannot be known for certain what effect the damage done to al-Qaida in its home territory has had on operations elsewhere.

Pakistani intelligence agents told The Associated Press that it has been months since they picked up any "chatter" from suspected al-Qaida men, and longer still since they received any specific intelligence on the whereabouts of bin Laden or any plans to launch a specific attack

They say the trail of the world's most wanted man -- long gone cold -- has turned icier than the frigid winter snows that blanket the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the terror mastermind is considered most likely to be hiding.

Pakistani officials have been quick to hail the long silence as a signal that it has already dismantled bin Laden's network, at least in this part of the world.

"We have broken the back of al-Qaida," Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said last month in a speech in Peshawar, the capital of the frontier province on the border with Afghanistan. Musharraf added last week that his government had "eliminated the terrorist centers" in the Waziristan tribal region and elsewhere.

"We have broken their communication system. We have destroyed their sanctuaries," the president told reporters. "They are not in a position to move in vehicles. They are unable to contact their people. They are on the run."

A senior official in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency told AP he couldn't remember the last time the agency got a strong lead on top-level al-Qaida fighters.

Pakistan's optimism seems to be backed by senior U.S. military officials in the region.

Maj. Gen. Eric Olson, the No. 2 American commander in Afghanistan, said he had seen nothing to indicate that al-Qaida was attempting to get its hands on nuclear or biological weapons.

There is "no evidence that they're trying to acquire a terrorist weapon of that type and, frankly, I don't believe that they are regrouping," he told AP in a Feb. 25 interview.

"I think the pressure on them here, the pressure on them in Pakistan, the pressure on them in Iraq, is pretty great and it makes very difficult for them to operate," Olson added.

The skeptical assessments from officials here fly in the face of warnings out of Washington, where President Bush is pushing Congress to approve a $419 billion defense budget for 2006.

The Homeland Security Department late last month issued a classified bulletin to officials that bin Laden was enlisting his top operative in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to plan potential attacks on the United States.

There have also long been fears -- though no evidence to date -- that rogue Pakistani nuclear scientists might have provided bin Laden's men with the know-how to build a crude atomic device or dirty bomb.

But Sherpao scoffed at such warnings.

"That is simply out of the question," he said of al-Qaida's ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction, adding that any al-Qaida leader who has escaped arrest was "more worried about their own safety."