Agence France Presse  --  Arab News

KABUL, 17 April 2004 — The United States’ top general said yesterday Washington was bolstering its troops in Afghanistan to combat terrorists and provide security for the elections there in September, while an official said US Marines were poised for a fresh offensive against Al-Qaeda and Taleban fighters.

“We are beefing up our forces here in Afghanistan,” Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a press conference at Kabul airport at the end of a brief visit to the Afghan capital.

“We are doing that for a couple of reasons. One, this is the time of the year when the terrorist activities are usually higher, and it’s also that time is approaching the elections, and we want to make sure we are ready to provide security.”

Myers flew into Kabul from Iraq for a one-day visit to hold talks with the commander of 13,500 US forces here, Lt. Gen. David Barno, and US ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad. The US last month boosted its 11,500-troop contingent in Afghanistan with the deployment of 2,000 extra Marines, bringing the total international military coalition troop strength to 15,500.

A US military official who did not want to be identified said the newly arrived Marines were ready to launch a renewed campaign against Al-Qaeda and Taleban fighters in their strongholds in central Uruzgan province and its southern neighbor Kandahar.

Myers said the United States was focused on trying “to find the location” of Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri “so we can bring OBL and Zawahiri to justice.”

Bin Laden has eluded the US manhunt for more than two a half years and is believed by most of the world’s intelligence agencies to be hiding in mountains straddling the porous 2,500-kilometer Afghan-Pakistani frontier.

US Army officials in January boasted they were confident of finally nabbing Bin Laden this year, which is also the year US President George W. Bush is running for re-election. But other US military officials have since stepped back from such optimism, and Barno similarly expressed reluctance to attach a timeframe to his capture.