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U.S. officials warn of greater threats from terrorists
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
International Herald Tribune
02/03/06 "IHT" -- -- WASHINGTON - Top U.S. intelligence and
military officials said Thursday that the threat of terror
attacks against American interests might be greater than ever,
despite progress against al-Qaida and the continuing wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, because terror groups have become more
diffuse and are aggressively seeking more lethal weapons.
"The enemy — while weakened and under pressure — is still
capable of global reach and still possesses the determination to
kill more Americans, and to do so with the world's most
dangerous weapons," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said at
the National Press Club.
"There is a tendency to underestimate the threat they pose," he
said.
Meanwhile, John Negroponte, who in May became the country's
first director of national intelligence, told the Senate
Intelligence Committee that despite "some notable successes
against the global jihadist threat" — many of them by the United
States' allies — there had been an "exponential increase" in the
numbers of targets being tracked by U.S. intelligence agencies,
from terrorist groups to alienated groups and drug traffickers.
Negroponte also expressed concern about Iran. He said that
hard-liners now controlled "all major branches and institutions
of government," that government repression had become more
effective, and that leadership had become "more confident and
assertive" than at any time since the early days of the Islamic
republic.
He added that Tehran's power and resources had been bolstered by
high oil prices and that Iran had prepared itself to withstand
outside pressures by forming trade arrangements with countries
such as China and India.
Still, Negroponte said, the intelligence agencies believed that
"regime-threatening instability is unlikely."
That assessment came after President Bush had infuriated Tehran
by saying in his State of the Union address that Iran was "held
hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and
repressing its people" and suggesting that the people might act
to win their freedom.
Negroponte told senators that while "we have eliminated much of
the leadership that presided over al-Qaida in 2001," there were
other factors of concern. One was that al-Qaida's leadership
along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area had gained much wider
sweep through its alliance with the terrorist network, based in
Iraq, of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Fragmentation of terror groups, both through pressure on more
established groups such as al-Qaida and a new generation of
copycats, had led to "the emergence of a decentralized and
diffused movement with minimal ... guidance or control," like
those that had attacked in Casablanca, Madrid and London,
Negroponte said. "They are harder to spot."
Al-Qaida and dozens of what he dubbed its "self-generating
progeny" remained interested in acquiring chemical, biological,
radiological or nuclear weapons, he said, even if attacks using
conventional explosives remained more likely. It was now more
likely, the intelligence chief said, that a terror group would
use weapons of mass destruction than a state would.
More broadly, Negroponte told senators, the slow pace of
political, social and economic change in most Muslim-dominated
countries "continues to fuel a global jihadist movement."
Copyright Houston Chronicle
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