Pakistan closes in on militants

KARACHI, Pakistan – Security forces following up on a raid that killed a top al Qaeda fugitive arrested four more suspected extremists Monday, and Pakistan’s president predicted the investigation would lead to more high-profile militants.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf lauded the killing of Amjad Hussain Farooqi, who died in a four-hour gunbattle Sunday after vowing never to surrender. Farooqi was wanted for his alleged role in the 2002 beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and in two assassination attempts on the Pakistani president in December 2003. Three other Pakistanis, one of them an Islamic cleric, were arrested in the raid.

“We eliminated one of the very major sources of terrorist attacks. He was not only involved on attacks on me but also on attacks elsewhere in the country. So a very big terrorist has been eliminated,” Musharraf told reporters in the Netherlands while traveling home from New York.

“Together with him there have been some other arrests and we will get a lot of useful information leading to further arrests and eliminations, I am very sure,” Musharraf added. He did not identify those who had been captured.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli praised the arrrest over the weekend of “several suspects who may have links to al Qaeda, including a suspect in the Daniel Pearl case. We view this as a further positive development in the global war on terror.” He said the arrests were an indication “of the significant progress being made in Pakistan and elsewhere in rounding up al Qaeda and other terrorist operatives.

“It’s an important development. But there is clearly more to do,” Ereli said.

In new violence, assailants ambushed a convoy of Pakistani soldiers in the border region of South Waziristan, killing five soldiers and wounding at least six. The region is one of the most violent fronts in the hunt for fugitive al Qaeda fighters.

Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao offered new information on Farooqi’s alleged involvement in terrorist activities.

Without offering specific details, he said Farooqi was linked to recent attacks on U.S. troops across the border in Afghanistan and was believed involved in a 2002 attack on a church in Islamabad that killed two Americans and three Pakistanis.

Sherpao said Farooqi had ties to al Qaeda leaders like former No. 3 Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was arrested by Pakistan in March 2003, and Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian believed to be a top Osama bin Laden lieutenant wanted in the twin bombings at U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998. Al-Adel is believed be hiding in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Iran.

Mohammed had ordered Farooqi to “concentrate only on VIP targets in Pakistan, especially the president,” Sherpao said.

Pakistan has arrested more than 600 al Qaeda suspects, including several senior figures in the terror network. Many have been handed over to U.S. authorities. Bin Laden and his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, are both believed to be hiding in the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan, though there has been no hard evidence of their whereabouts for years.

Asked about bin Laden’s whereabouts, Musharraf said he was uncertain. “Oh no, I don’t know where he is,” he said. “I wish I did.”