US lost track of Osama years ago: Gates

WASHINGTON: US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Sunday that the United States had had no information about Osama bin Laden in years and still did not know where he was hiding.

‘Well, we don’t know for a fact where Osama bin Laden is. If we did, we’d go get him,’ said US Defence Secretary Robert Gates. —Photo by Reuters

‘Well, we don’t know for a fact where Osama bin Laden is. If we did, we’d go get him,’ said US Defence Secretary Robert Gates. —Photo by Reuters

In an interview to ABC News on Sunday, Mr Gates said he could not confirm reports this week that a detainee might have seen Bin Laden in Afghanistan earlier this year.

Asked when was the last time the United States had any good intelligence on Bin Laden’s whereabouts, Mr Gates said: ‘I think it’s been years.’

Asked to comment on Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s statement earlier this week that Bin Laden was not in Pakistan, Mr Gates said: ‘Well, we don’t know for a fact where Osama bin Laden is. If we did, we’d go get him.’

In similar interviews to two other US channels, US National Security Adviser Gen (retd) James Jones said he believed Bin Laden still spent time inside Afghanistan, indicating a major change in the previous US stance that the Al Qaida leader was definitely inside Pakistan.

Mr Jones endorsed what Pakistanis have been saying since the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attacks: Osama bin Laden does not have a permanent base. He keeps travelling between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

‘The best estimate is that he is somewhere in North Waziristan, sometimes on the Pakistani side of the border, sometimes on the Afghan side of the border,’ he said.

The US official described North Waziristan as a ‘very, very rough, mountainous area. Generally ungoverned and we’re going to have to get after that to make sure that this very, very important symbol of what Al Qaida stands for is either, once again, on the run or captured or killed.’

Senator John McCain, the former Republican presidential candidate, also endorsed this view, saying that people in the region had told him Bin Laden ‘moves back and forth.’ He said the hunt for Bin Laden had prevented him from establishing bases for training and equipping terrorists, adding, ‘Don’t think Al Qaida could not flourish without him if we give them a safe haven.’

In another interview, Mr Gates disagreed with the suggestion that the US did not have good intelligence about Bin Laden because the Pakistani government had not cooperated with them.

‘No. I think it’s because, if, as we suspect, he is in North Waziristan, it is an area that the Pakistani government has not had a presence in, in quite some time,’ he said.

‘The truth of the matter is that we have been very impressed by the Pakistani army’s willingness to go into places like Swat and South Waziristan. If one had asked any of us a year or more ago if the Pakistani army would be doing that, we would have said, ‘No chance.’

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it was important to kill or capture Bin Laden and other Al Qaida leaders, ‘but certainly you can make enormous progress absent that.’

A US Senate report released last week said Bin Laden was ‘within the grasp’ of US forces in late 2001 but escaped because then defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld rejected calls for reinforcements.

Sunday’s statements indicate a change in US attitude towards Pakistan since the unveiling of a new American policy for the Pak-Afghan region earlier this week.

The new approach stresses the need to build a strong partnership with Pakistan, replacing the old mantra that Islamabad needs to do more to defeat the extremists.

Since President Barack Obama unveiled his new policy on Tuesday, US officials have openly acknowledged that Pakistan is a nuclear state and understands the responsibilities that come with it. They admitted that Pakistan is serious about fighting the Taliban and had taken the fight to the Taliban heartland.

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