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Osama bin Laden hiding in Pak's tribal areas: CIA chief | While admitting that the agency does not have exact knowledge about Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden's whereabouts, the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) chief Leon Panetta has said that it is believed that the warlord 'is in an area of the tribal areas of Pakistan.' Panetta, who appeared on ABC's "This
Week" programme, said that intelligence agencies had last information regarding
bin Laden's location in the early days of the nine year old Afghan war but there
has been no information about him in the recent past. "It's been a while. I think
it goes back almost to the early 2000s, you know in terms of actually when (bin
Laden) was leaving from Afghanistan to Pakistan that we had the last precise information
about where he might be located. Since then it has been very difficult to get
any intelligence on his exact location," Panetta said. Panetta, however, claimed
that most of Al-Qaeda's top commanders have been taken out, and expressed the
hope that the CIA would soon be able to get bin Laden and second in command Ayman
Zawahiri. "If we keep that pressure on, we think ultimately we can flush out bin
Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri and get after them," he said. The number of Al Qaeda
members remaining in Afghanistan is "relatively small", said Panetta. "At most,
we're looking at 50 to 100, maybe less. It's in that vicinity. There's no question
that the main location of al Qaeda is in the tribal areas of Pakistan," the CIA
chief said. Panetta stressed that US President Barack Obama has made going after
Al-Qaeda the "fundamental purpose" of the Afghan military mission. "We've got
to disrupt and dismantle Al-Qaeda and their militant allies so they never attack
this country again," he said. |
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