Al Qaeda's leaders are in Pakistan, says US

UNITED STATES: Al Qaeda's leaders are holed up in a secure hide-out in Pakistan, from which they are revitalizing their bruised but resilient network, U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte said.

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 U.S. interests," the U.S. director of national intelligence said in his annual assessment of worldwide threats against the United States 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.

Up to now, U.S. officials have said that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri are hiding somewhere along the rugged mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Negroponte did not cite bin Laden or Zawahri by name and did not say where in Pakistan U.S. intelligence believes al Qaeda leaders are hiding.

WASHINGTON, Friday, Reuters