Al-Qaeda's leaders are holed up in a secure hide-out in Pakistan, from which they are revitalizing their bruised but resilient network, US intelligence chief John Negroponte said on Thursday.
In an unusually direct statement on the whereabouts of the militant group's top echelon, Negroponte told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that Pakistan is the center of a web of al-Qaeda connections that stretches across the globe into Europe.
"Al-Qaeda is the terrorist organization that poses the greatest threat to US interests," the US director of national intelligence said in his annual assessment of worldwide threats against the US and its interests.
"They are cultivating stronger operational connections and relationships that radiate outward from their leaders' secure hide-out in Pakistan to affiliates throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe," he said.
It appeared to be the first time in congressional testimony that Negroponte has singled out Pakistan as the locale for the headquarters of the network.
Al-Qaeda is accused of perpetrating the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,000 people in 2001.
Up to now, US officials have said that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri are hiding somewhere along the rugged mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Negroponte did not cite bin Laden or Zawahiri by name and did not say where in Pakistan US intelligence believes al-Qaeda leaders are hiding.
Negroponte, who became US intelligence chief in April last year and will soon leave to become deputy secretary of state, told the same panel a year ago that al-Qaeda's leadership posed a threat to the US from bases in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area.
"We have captured or killed numerous senior al-Qaeda operatives, but al-Qaeda's core elements are resilient. They continue to plot attacks against our homeland and other targets with the objective of inflicting mass casualties," he said on Thursday.
US officials have long complained about Islamist militant activity in Pakistan, which has been blamed as a source of increasing Taliban and al-Qaeda attacks in neighboring Afghanistan.
Lieutenant General Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency also testified to the committee.
His statement said that while Pakistani aid has led to the arrest or killing of many terrorists, Pakistan's border with Afghanistan "remains a haven for al-Qaeda's leadership and other extremists."
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS