Pakistan going after al Qaeda planners

Pakistani security forces aim to close a net around more key planners in Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network in coming weeks and months, senior government officials said yesterday.

The government was also considering handing to US agents two captured suspects at the centre of Pakistan's recent breakthroughs against al Qaeda - Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, intelligence sources said.

Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said recently arrested militants were still in Pakistan's custody though he refused to confirm Khan's arrest.

With terror a crucial issue in who wins the US election in November, the Bush administration is increasingly looking to Pakistan to deliver big names on its wanted list for al Qaeda.

"We know key al Qaeda planners are operating out of Pakistan, and we are hoping to neutralise them," a senior government official told Reuters.

A senior interior ministry official said security forces were trying to arrest several foreign al Qaeda members on the basis of information extracted from some 20 Pakistani and foreign militants captured over the past couple of weeks.

"Investigations are in full swing by our top agencies. But we cannot reveal the names of those we are looking for because it would hamper investigations," he said.

Interior Minister Hayat described Ghailani's capture as the most significant by Pakistan in some time. The United States offered a multi-million dollar reward for the capture of Tanzanian-born Ghailani, wanted for his role in the 1998 East African US embassy bombings.

But intelligence sources said it was information resulting from Khan's arrest in early July that led to the arrest of 12 al Qaeda suspects in Britain earlier this week and the US decision to put New York and Washington on high alert against possible al Qaeda attacks.

One intelligence source said Khan had e-mailed al Qaeda comrades while in custody as part of a sting operation by security agencies.

The source said Khan sent e-mails as late as Monday, the same day his name appeared in US media after a briefing by US officials, raising the possibility that the disclosure had jeopardised the sting operation.

Mr Hayat sought to draw a veil over Khan's significance to the al Qaeda investigation calling it a "very sensitive subject" and saying there had been a lot of "media hype".

"It doesn't help us, it doesn't help the British, it doesn't help the Americans."

Pakistani officials said military operations in South Waziristan on the border with Afghanistan were driving al Qaeda operatives to look for new safe havens.

Mr Hayat said there was clearly an al Qaeda presence in the southern port of Karachi and the western city of Quetta, but operatives were also hiding in obscure towns.

The minister said the string of arrests in recent weeks had helped security forces get a better picture of the network, but the whereabouts of bin Laden, the world's most wanted man, was still unknown.