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A top US general said here Thursday that Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, two top terrorists at the United States' most wanted list, will be finally captured just like former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
"There are difficulties to find individuals, but what would happen is that bin Laden, if he is still alive, is captured someday, just like we captured Saddam Hussein," Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers told reporters in Afghanistan.
Two years after a US-led military campaign ousted the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, over 11,500 US-led coalition forces are still in some corners of the country, hunting for the leaders of the Taliban and al-Qaeda network, which had been harbored by the hard-line regime.
Myers, who was in Afghanistan for visiting US troops here after an Iraq trip, said that bin Laden and Omar would probably be captured in difficult terrain areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the two have some supporters.
It is widely believed here that bin Laden was hiding in tribal region across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border while Omar is in mountains of southern Afghanistan close to the border.
"Someday they would be brought to justice, like Saddam was," Myers said while briefing reporters on his visit at Bagram Airbase, headquarters of the US-led coalition forces, some 70 kilometers north of Kabul.
Some US performers, including actor Robbin Williams and professional wrestler Kurt Angle, were accompanying Meyers on his morale raising trip to Iraq and Afghanistan to entertain US soldiers before the Christmas.
Asked about possible US role in the proposed expansion of the NATO-led peacekeeping force beyond Kabul, Myers said US troops would cooperate with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), but would not be part of the expansion of peacekeeping operation.
He said that an agreement would be worked out between US forces and the NATO force on mutual cooperation in the post-war country, adding that US troops would continue to send small-sized civil-military Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) to help local security and rebuilding efforts across the country.
However, the US general stressed that US troops in Afghanistan would continue the mission to root out remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, who are waging guerrilla warfare in the southern and eastern provinces.
(Xinhua News Agency December 19, 2003)
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