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Karzai Urges Joint Operation to Hunt bin Laden
Monday, June 24, 2002
The Hindustan Times

Al Jazeera said Ghaith had sent them the recording, which claimed: "Our tanzeem (organisation) is still there and is operating at its full strength.

Washington
Afghan president Hamid Karzai has called for a joint operation to hunt down Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders after a spokesman for the wanted terrorist said he was "well and alive", and threatened more attacks on the US, UPI reported.

"My idea is that there has to be a three-way cooperation, a tripartite cooperation between us and the Pakistani government and the US, and we must move together into an operation to find people like bin Laden," Karzai told CNN.

He was responding to an audio recording broadcast Sunday by the Al Jazeera television news channel of Al-Qaeda spokesman, Suleman Abu Ghaith.

Ghaith said the American military action against Al-Qaeda had failed to destroy the group, adding that, "by the grace of God, Sheikh Osama bin Laden and (his second-in-command) Ayman al-Zawahiri are well and alive."

Karzai spoke of the need for the US forces to "stay in Afghanistan for as long as it takes" to finish off the remnants of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, adding that it was in "the best interest of Afghanistan, Pakistan... and the US" to do so.

Although Ghaith gave no clue as to bin Laden's whereabouts and Karzai said he did know where the world's most wanted man was hiding, chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee Bob Graham told CNN the terrorist mastermind was "probably in western Pakistan, in an area controlled by ethnic Pushtun tribes."
(More: HindustanTimes.com News Source)
2002 © Hindustan Times, Ltd.

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