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Pakistani officials scoff at US fears

Senior US officials have warned in recent weeks that al-Qaeda is regrouping for another huge attack, its agents bent on acquiring nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in a nightmare scenario that could dwarf the horror of Sept. 11.

But in Pakistan and Afghanistan -- where Osama bin Laden and his chief deputy are believed to be hiding -- intelligence agents, politicians and a top US general paint a different picture.

They say a relentless military crackdown, the arrests last summer of several men allegedly involved in plans to launch attacks on US financial institutions, and the killing in September of a top Pakistani al-Qaeda suspect wanted in a number of attacks -- including the 2002 killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and two failed assassination attempts against President General Pervez Musharraf -- have effectively decapitated al-Qaeda.

Pakistani intelligence agents told reporters that it has been months since they picked up any "chatter" from suspected al-Qaeda men, and longer still since they received any specific intelligence on the whereabouts of bin Laden or any plans to launch a specific attack

They say the trail of the world's most wanted man has turned icier than the frigid winter snows that blanket the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the terror mastermind is considered most likely to be hiding.

Pakistani officials have been quick to hail the long silence as a signal that it has already dismantled bin Laden's network, at least in this part of the world.

"We have broken the back of al-Qaeda," Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said last month in a speech in Peshawar.

Musharraf added last week that his government had "eliminated the terrorist centers" in the Waziristan tribal region and elsewhere.

"We have broken their communication system. We have destroyed their sanctuaries," he told reporters. "They are not in a position to move in vehicles. They are unable to contact their people. They are on the run."

A senior official in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency told reporters he couldn't remember the last time the agency got a strong lead on top-level al-Qaeda fighters.

"Last year, we frequently heard Arabs on radios talking about their hatred for [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai and Musharraf for supporting Americans, and we were able to trace al-Qaeda hideouts in South Waziristan," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Lately, such conversations have decreased."

Pakistan's optimism seems to be backed by top US military officials in the area. Major General Eric Olson, the No. 2 US commander in Afghanistan, said he had seen nothing to indicate that al-Qaeda was attempting to get its hands on nuclear or biological weapons.

There is "no evidence that they're trying to acquire a terrorist weapon of that type and, frankly, I don't believe that they are regrouping," he told reporters in a Feb. 25 interview. ""I think the pressure on them here, the pressure on them in Pakistan, the pressure on them in Iraq, is pretty great and it makes very difficult for them to operate."

The skeptical assessments from officials here fly in the face of warnings out of Washington. But Sherpao scoffed at such warnings:

"That is simply out of the question," he said of al-Qaeda's ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction, adding that any al-Qaeda leader who has escaped arrest was "more worried about their own safety."
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