U.S.: Pakistan A Terror 'Safe Haven'

U.S.: Pakistan A Terror 'Safe Haven'

U.S. Counterterrorism Official Says Likely Bin Laden Is In Pakistan

(AP) The U.S. ambassador in charge of counterterrorism said Saturday that parts of Pakistan are a "safe haven" for militants and that Osama bin Laden was more likely to be hiding there than in Afghanistan.

Henry Crumpton lauded Pakistan for arresting "hundreds and hundreds" of al Qaeda figures but said that it needed to do more.

"Has Pakistan done enough? I think the answer is no. I have conveyed that to them, other U.S. officials have conveyed that to them," he told reporters at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul after talks with Afghan officials.

The chief spokesman for Pakistan's army, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, dismissed Crumpton's assertion that Pakistan was not doing enough.

"It is totally absurd," he said. "No one has conveyed this thing to Pakistan, and if someone claims so, it is absurd."

Crumpton confirmed that Pakistan had captured Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, a top al Qaeda strategist with a $5 million bounty on his head — whom U.S. and Pakistani officials say was arrested in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta in November. Crumpton said that this showed that Pakistan is working to arrest al Qaeda leaders.

Pakistan has also launched repeated counterterrorism operations in its lawless tribal regions close to the Afghan border over the past two years, in which hundreds of militants and soldiers have died.

"Our expectation is that they will continue to make progress, and we know that it's difficult," he said. Pakistan "can't remain a safe haven for enemy forces, and right now parts of Pakistan are indeed that."

Crumpton said U.S. officials continue to believe that al Qaeda leader bin Laden is somewhere along the Afghan-Pakistani border, and more likely on the Pakistani side.

"If we knew exactly where bin Laden was, we'd go get him," Crumpton said. "But we're very confident he's along the Pakistan-Afghan border somewhere," he said.

He added that there was a "higher probability" bin Laden was hiding on the Pakistan side.

A senior security official in Islamabad said that Crumpton, during meetings with Pakistani intelligence and government officials this week, praised Pakistan for its efforts to hunt down militants.

"I am surprised that he praised us here, and is saying something else in Kabul," the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

The official added that Gen. John Abizaid, the chief of the U.S. Central Command, praised and thanked Pakistan when he met with Pakistani leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf on Thursday.

Meanwhile, gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on a former regional Taliban leader in southwestern Pakistan on Saturday, killing him before fleeing, police said.

Mullah Samad Barakzai, who was head of the Department for Promotion of Virtue And Prevention of Vice in southern Helmand province during the Taliban's hardline rule, was standing near a seminary in Quetta when the assailants attacked him, said Qazi Abdul Wahid, an area police chief.

He said Barakzai, who is also known as Maulvi Yar Mohammed, had been living in Pakistan since the Taliban regime was ousted in late 2001 as a result of U.S.-led attacks.

The man had also distanced himself from the Taliban and had become a supporter of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government, Wahid said.

"It seems that he has been killed by Taliban," he told The Associated Press.