ISLAMABAD, 22 December 2005 — US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said here yesterday he did not believe that Osama Bin Laden was now capable of supervising his amorphous Al-Qaeda network.
Rumsfeld said the US government does not know Bin Laden’s whereabouts but it’s a “reasonable assumption” that he is in the remote area along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
Rumsfeld flew to Pakistan for a visit to the areas hardest hit by the Oct. 8 earthquake that killed an estimated 87,000 people, forced at least three million from their homes and led to the deployment of hundreds of US troops to provide medical, logistical and other assistance. Vice President Dick Cheney also visited Pakistan this week.
In an interview aboard an Air Force C-32 flight from Washington, Rumsfeld said he does not know where Bin Laden is, or even if he’s still alive. But a good guess is that he’s hiding along the border.
“It’s a reasonable assumption, if you don’t know where he is, but if you want to guess, he has in the past operated in those areas,” Rumsfeld said.
Speaking earlier in Washington before he departed for Pakistan, Rumsfeld said a reduction in the size of the US military force in Afghanistan — from about 19,000 to about 16,000 _ would not diminish the hunt for Bin Laden and other terrorists in the area along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
Rumsfeld told reporters he wanted to come to Pakistan to see the humanitarian relief operations and to demonstrate US support for Pakistan and its recovery efforts. He added that he found it interesting that Bin Laden has not been heard from publicly in nearly a year.
“I don’t know what it means,” Rumsfeld said. “I suspect that in any event, if he’s alive and functioning that he’s probably spending a major fraction of his time trying to avoid getting caught. I have trouble believing that he’s able to operate sufficiently to be in a position of major command over a worldwide Al-Qaeda operation, but I could be wrong. We just don’t know.”
Before flying on to Afghanistan, Rumsfeld toured a US military field hospital in Muzaffarabad, and stopped in neighboring North West Frontier Province, which was also badly hit in the quake.
Rumsfeld posed for photographs with US personnel and told them their efforts were appreciated both in Pakistan and in the United States.
US military aircraft have dropped millions of pounds of relief supplies to the areas hardest hit by the Oct. 8 quake. The UN humanitarian chief, Jan Egeland, said last week that there were hundreds of thousands of lives at stake as winter weather descends on northwestern Pakistan and the disputed Kashmir region.
“We’ve become a symbol of hope and relief,” he said.
Protesters Denounce Offensive
Demonstrators took to the streets of the Pakistani city of Quetta yesterday to protest against a military crackdown on separatist rebels, witnesses and officials said.
Earlier, the rebels launched rocket attacks on five military posts but there were no casualties, a military spokesman said.
“Stop the military operation!” and “Down with Musharraf” several hundred protesters chanted as they marched through the capital of Balochistan province before gathering to listen to speakers who criticized President Pervez Musharraf’s government.
