Bin Laden Will Be Captured This Year, Says US General

 

Wednesday  February 4, 2004

Sayed Salahuddin, Reuters

KABUL, 4 February 2004 — The US military’s top general in Afghanistan expressed optimism yesterday that Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and Taleban chief Mullah Mohammed Omar would be captured this year.

At a ceremony marking the shift of the US headquarters in Afghanistan to Kabul, Lt.-Gen. David Barno gave the most optimistic assessment yet by a US commander on prospects for capturing Bin Laden, the world’s most wanted man.

“Their day has ended and this year will decisively sound the death knell of their movements in Afghanistan,” Barno said.

“We are clearly focused on the leadership,” he added at a news conference later. “This is an important year, Afghanistan is coming out of a long difficult period, and I think this is going to be very very critical year for us here.”

Asked whether he was optimistic about capturing Bin Laden, Omar and allied militant leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar this year, he said moving the headquarters to Kabul from Bagram air base to the north of the capital would help coordinate intelligence work.

“So I am optimistic,” he said.

The whereabouts of Bin Laden and Mullah Omar have remained a mystery since U.S-led troops toppled the Taleban regime in 2001 for harboring the Al-Qaeda network blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. US and Afghan officials have said that the men are thought to be hiding out in the mountains of the rugged tribal belt between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Barno’s comments came ahead of presidential elections in Afghanistan due to be held in June as well as U.S President George W. Bush’s bid for re-election in November. He said the aim was to hold Afghan elections on time, despite warnings from the United Nations and aid agencies that the process will be hampered by militant violence or hijacked by powerful regional leaders in President Hamid Karzai’s US-backed government. The period since August has been the bloodiest in Afghanistan since the Taleban’s fall, with more than 500 people killed in clashes around the country.

More NATO Troops

NATO defense ministers are set to expand the alliance role in Afghanistan and may deploy thousands of additional troops, said a media report to be published today.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization defense ministers, who will meet in Munich on Friday, are due to expand the number of Afghan Provincial Reconstruction Teams to 18 from the present 10, said the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper.

Britain, Germany and New Zealand will each take charge of one of the new teams and the US will operate the remaining five, said the report. In addition, NATO is expected to take over leadership of the fight against remaining Al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan under a merger of the presently separate NATO-led International Security Assistance Force and US combat troops in the country.

The report quoted alliance experts as saying ISAF forces would have to be beefed up to a total of 14,000 troops.

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