Panetta says U.S. is 'within reach' of defeating Al Qaeda. UN Likely to Tighten Sanctions On Eritrea Over Support to Al Shabaab

The new defense chief says intelligence uncovered in the Bin Laden raid showed that 10 years of U.S. operations against the terror network had left it with fewer than two dozen key operatives. Panetta is visiting Afghanistan for the first time as defense secretary.

Then-CIA Director Leon Panetta with President Obama in May. Panetta's assessment of Al Qaeda comes in the wake of Obama's decision to withdraw 30,000 troops from Afghanistan over the next year. (Jim Watson, AFP/Getty Images)

KABUL, Afghanistan— Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declared Saturday that the United States is "within reach" of "strategically defeating" Al Qaeda as a terrorist threat, but that doing so would require killing or capturing the group's 10 to 20 remaining leaders.Arriving in Afghanistan for the first time since taking office earlier this month, Panetta said that intelligence uncovered in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May showed that 10 years of U.S. operations against Al Qaeda had left it with fewer than two dozen key operatives, most of whom are in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and North Africa."If we can be successful at going after them, I think we can really undermine their ability to do any kind of planning to be able to conduct any kinds of attack on this country," Panetta told reporters on his way to Afghanistan aboard a U.S. Air Force jet. "That's why I think" that defeat of Al Qaeda is "within reach," he added.Panetta's comments were the most detailed recent assessment of Al Qaeda's strength by a senior U.S. official, and it comes in the wake of President Barack Obama's decision to withdraw 30,000 troops from Afghanistan over the next year and a half, a move that he said was possible in part because of the damage inflicted on Al Qaeda and its allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan.Panetta, a former California congressman who headed the CIA before being chosen by Obama to replace Robert M. Gates at the Pentagon, provided no estimate for how long it might take to defeat Al Qaeda, and he acknowledged that it would take "more work." He was speaking to reporters for the first time since taking over the Pentagon.Panetta said during his confirmation hearings last month that Al Qaeda had been severely damaged, but he has not claimed before that it was nearing defeat. The CIA and the military's Joint Special Operations Command have kept lists of senior terrorist leaders for years, adding new names as individuals on the list were killed or captured. It was unclear whether Panetta was indicating that the U.S. now believes it is nearing the end of the known terror leaders."Now is the moment following the death of Bin Laden to put maximum pressure on them because I do believe that if we continue this effort we can really cripple Al Qaeda as a threat to this country," he said.

The U.S. believes Ayman al Zawahiri, the Egyptian who succeeded Bin Laden as Al Qaeda's top leader, was probably hiding in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the remote and largely ungoverned region along the Afghanistan border where a stew of militant groups now operate, Panetta said.But getting help in tracking him down from Pakistan, which has severely scaled back cooperation with the U.S. on drone strikes and other operations since the Bin Laden raid, could be harder than ever. Before Bin Laden was killed by U.S. troops in the garrison town of Abbottabad, Pakistani officials had for years dismissed U.S. claims that the Saudi terrorists was hiding in their country. Since the raid, which was undertaken without warning to Islamabad, Pakistan has halted or reduced most joint operations with the U.S.

Panetta said there were "suspicions but no smoking gun" indicating Bin Laden's whereabouts were known to some Pakistani officials, but said he was awaiting the results of an investigation by the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, Pakistan's main military intelligence organization.In one of his last meetings as director of the CIA, Panetta said, he told the head of Pakistan's intelligence service that the U.S. had a list of targets that it wanted help in pursuing.Zawahiri "is one of those we would like to see the Pakistani's target along with our help," adding about Pakistan that "we've got to continue to push them." At least one senior Al Qaeda operative, Illias Kashmiri, was killed recently in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan, a U.S. official said last week.Panetta said that it was from Yemen -- not Pakistan -- that the U.S. faces the most potent threat of future terrorist attacks, from an Al Qaeda offshoot known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The group has gained strength in recent months as unrest has swept through Sana, the capital, and large swaths of its rugged hinterlands, where militants are growing in strength. The administration last week revealed that it had captured and interrogated Ahmed Abdul Kadir Warsame, an alleged Somali militant with ties to AQAP, on a boat traveling between Yemen and Somalia. The U.S. has also targeted Anwar al Awlaki, a U.S. citizen hiding in Yemen, in a drone strike but had missed killing him."There's no question that when you look at what constitutes the biggest threat in terms of attacks on the United States, more of that comes from Yemen and from people like Awlaki," Panetta said. "There are a number of operations that are being conducted not only by the Defense Department but by my former agency to try to focus on going after those targets." Panetta was referring to CIA operations in Yemen.

During his two-day visit to Afghanistan, Panetta is expected to meet with President Hamid Karzai and Gen. David Petraeus, who is stepping down soon as the top U.S. commander to take over Panetta's old job at the CIA. He arrived in Kabul after a stop at the airport in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, which the U.S. military uses as logistics hub for Afghanistan. He shifted from the Air Force E-4B, the converted 747 used by the defense secretary, to a C-17, a cargo jet, for the final leg to Afghanistan.Panetta has been to Afghanistan twice as CIA director. LA Times

UN Likely to Tighten Sanctions On Eritrea Over Support to Al Shabaab

Nairobi — Eritrea's alleged involvement with Al Shabaab will be the subject of a UN Security Council meeting on Friday at which the powerful body will determine whether to slap further sanctions on the Horn of Africa nation.It has been a rough diplomatic fortnight for the Horn of Africa country that has been in the news for the wrong reasons: Eritrea stands accused by its neighbours of supporting and funding the ragtag Al Shabaab extremist outfit.At the Security Council meeting in New York, it is expected that the latest report from the UN agency that monitors Eritrea and Somalia will be made public.Last week, President Kibaki broke with his style and, on behalf of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Igad), fired a diplomatic salvo against Eritrea."The Executive Council has drawn our attention to the growing destabilisation activities in the region associated with Eritrea."This is a matter of serious concern and it is my hope that this summit will focus some attention on it in view of the need for collective security and sustainable peace," President Kibaki said.True to his hopes, when the conference ended, the six-country organisation directed its diplomatic guns on Eritrea, accusing it of supplying arms to the Al Shabaab through Kismayu."The presidents were really concerned about the role Eritrea continues to play in aiding these violent groups."They were told that the Kampala bombers were trained in Eritrea, which also tried to use the OLF (Oromo Liberation Front) to bomb an AU (African Union) meeting in Addis Ababa in January," said a member of the Kenyan delegation, which accompanied President Kibaki who requested not to be named because he is not authorised to speak on behalf of the Head of State.Eritrea has long been courting the protests over its involvement with extremist Al Shabaab fighters in war-torn Somalia.Since 2002, the Somalia Monitoring Group has investigated the role of the Eritrean regime in destabilising Somalia.Its reports reveal that in the May-November 2006 hiatus, the Eritrean regime used dhows and leased aircraft to transport weapons to Somalia.

Train extremist groups
This effectively subverted the efforts of the African Union and the United Nations to restore peace and stability in one of Africa's failed states."Driven by geo-political rivalries, religious and ideological differences, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Egypt supported Eritrea to supply arms and train extremist groups," said Mr Thomas Kimaru of the Africa Policy Institute.

In December 2009, following revelations of its activities in support of terror networks, the Security Council imposed targeted sanctions on Eritrea. On March 10, 2010, the Security Council expanded the mandate of the Monitoring Group to cover oversight of the arms embargo on Eritrea and the designation of individuals subjected to a travel ban and asset freeze for violations.In an interview with the Sunday Nation, Eritrea's ambassador to Kenya, Mr Beneye Russom, denied that Asmara was behind the instability in Somalia.He also denied that Eritrea was funding Al Shabaab, which controls large parts of the war-torn country."Eritrea is a very poor nation. We do not have the capacity or the will to fund Al Shabaab. It is not our agenda to see Somalia disintegrate," Mr Russom said.