Rice won't speculate on bin Laden's capture

By The Associated Press

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WASHINGTON — Al-Qaida's leaders have much less freedom to operate than they once did but it does little good to speculate about whether the United States and its allies are closing in on Osama bin Laden, national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice said yesterday.

"I am going to believe that we're closer to him on that day that I get the phone call that we've gotten him," Rice told CNN's "Late Edition." "I think that it's a mistake to try and figure out how close we are or not, but it is true that their world is getting smaller."

A top State Department counterterrorism official, Joseph Cofer Black, said Sept. 5 that bin Laden's capture is getting closer. "If he has a watch, he should be looking at it because the clock is ticking," Black said. However, a top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan said Saturday that the trail has gone cold.

On CBS' "Face the Nation," Rice called bin Laden "a shadowy figure who hides in caves. But he's not directing things out of Afghanistan with major training camps and allies in places like Pakistan and free rein to work along the Afghan-Pakistani border. His world is much, much smaller."

Secretary of State Colin Powell, on "Fox News Sunday," said, "Yes, Osama bin Laden is still out there and he's being chased. He's being pursued."

Powell also said the United States did not get distracted by the war in Iraq.

"We didn't take our eye off the ball," he said, "but Iraq was a danger the president felt strongly we had to deal with, and we dealt with that, too."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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