More possible al-Qaida officials apprehended in Pakistan

AP Military WriterWASHINGTON (AP) -- Pakistani authorities have apprehended several suspected al-Qaida officials in the past two weeks, including one man who may have been a top finance official for the terrorist network, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday.

U.S. officials are not certain about the identity of those who were apprehended, Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news briefing.

"It's hard to know in near real time ... who someone is," Rumsfeld said. "There's so much lying and disinformation and aliases."

Rumsfeld said "we'll all survive" if U.S. forces never find al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, though "it would be nice to find him."

"It's not likely that we'll never find him," said Rumsfeld, who added he did not know if bin Laden was alive or dead.

Rumsfeld confirmed that U.S. soldiers have started providing security for Hamid Karzai, the head of Afghanistan's transitional government.

"We look at it as a relatively short-term matter" to last several weeks or months, Rumsfeld said. The United States also would help train Afghan bodyguards for Karzai, he said.

The U.S. soldiers replaced Karzai's Afghan guards amid concerns that the assassination of an Afghan vice president this month illustrated larger problems with security in Kabul. Providing security for Karzai is in the United States' interest, Rumsfeld said.

"Clearly, it is important for that country that the outcome of the loya jirga not be negated by violence," Rumsfeld said, referring to the tribal council which chose Karzai to head the two-year transitional government.

Rumsfeld also defended U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan, saying the bombings have been the most accurate ever and the number of civilian casualties relatively low.

He said an airstrike July 1 on a group of villages in central Afghanistan was based on observations by U.S. troops on the ground, not false information from Afghans. More than 40 civilians were killed in the airstrike, Afghan officials say.

"We had people on the ground with eyes on targets who saw anti-aircraft (guns) and targeted them," Rumsfeld said. "It was not some rival warlords turning the United States on their rival warlord enemies."