Pentagon official says hunt for bin Laden, Taliban leaders could take months

By MATT KELLEY
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned Tuesday against declaring victory too soon in Afghanistan, saying "a wounded animal can be dangerous."

As Afghan fighters backed by intense U.S. airstrikes overran some al-Qaida cave hide-outs at Tora Bora, Rumsfeld cautioned that the progress does not mean the United States will have achieved its objectives – which are to bring the terrorists and their Taliban supporters to justice.

"There's no question but that some of the terrorists are on the run and there also are pockets of terrorists and Taliban that are being attacked as we speak," Rumsfeld told a Pentagon press conference.

"But we all know that a wounded animal can be dangerous, and so too the Taliban and al-Qaida can hide in the mountains ... caves ... cities," he said.

They also can escape across borders to regroup and fight again "as they have promised to do," Rumsfeld said at a news conference with Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Myers noted Marines are working outside the southern city of Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold that fell last week to cut escape routes. Likewise, he said, the Navy is in the Arabian Sea, trying to stop any escape by water.

"I've been reading an awful lot of things and seeing on television a great rush to declare it a success and over," Rumsfeld said of the military campaign. "I regret to say that it is not yet."

His second-in-command delivered the same message at Monday's press conference.

The hunt for Osama bin Laden and other terrorist and Taliban leaders in Afghanistan could last well into next year, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said.

"The war in Afghanistan is not won," he said. "The American people need to be prepared for the fact that we may be hunting Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan months from now."

Wolfowitz said the war on terrorism has eroded bin Laden's authority as leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network, disrupted his global communications and limited his access to money and weapons.

Still, most of the top al-Qaida and Taliban leaders remain at large, even though the Taliban has fallen and two or three of its senior officials have been captured by rebel forces in recent days, Wolfowitz said.

"It's going to be a very long and difficult job to find them, to root them out," he said. One of the recently captured Taliban leaders is Mullah Fazel, who was the regime's deputy defense minister.

The U.S. search for bin Laden is focusing on a cave and tunnel complex in Afghanistan's mountainous east. The Pentagon disclosed it used a 15,000-pound bomb against a cave in the Tora Bora area on Sunday after receiving indications it might have contained senior al-Qaida leaders, possibly including bin laden.

The "daisy cutter" bombs create immense explosions which can cause damage nearly a mile away.

Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the success of that U.S. attack was not yet clear because fierce fighting was still going on there.

At the very least, Stufflebeem said, the daisy cutter closed that cave's entrance and took a psychological toll on anyone nearby.

"This cave complex is literally on the sheer walls of a valley, and therefore the reverberation effect that goes up in those caves should have some kind of a negative effect," he said.

More Afghan rebel forces are asking the Pentagon for weapons and other supplies to help fight al-Qaida, but Wolfowitz said these requests are being weighed carefully in light of the chaotic situation.

"We're getting some very recent defectors or people who have changed sides who now suddenly want weapons," he said. "We'd like to make sure that those weapons are going to be used to advance our objectives and not to get involved in some internal fight in Afghanistan."

U.S. Marines, meanwhile, expanded their hunt for Mullah Mohammed Omar, the supreme leader of the Taliban regime that harbored bin Laden since 1996. Marine ground and air assault teams moved closer to Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan. Omar is believed to be hiding in the area.

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