Washington: United States’ top Pantagon official has said that the US military will capture and kill new al Qaida leader and that he will meet the same destiny as Osama bin Laden.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters at the Pentagon that Ayman al-Zawahri will face challenges as al Qaida’s new leader, saying he lacks what Gates referred to as bin Laden’s “peculiar charisma.”
Gates said that Zawahri, who remained bin Laden’s deputy, also does not have the operational experience of the former leader who was killed last month by the US commandos during a raid in Pakistan’s garrison city on May 2.
“This announcement by al-Qaida reminds us that despite having suffered a huge loss with the killing of bin Laden and a number of others al-Qaida seeks to perpetuate itself, seeks to find replacements for those who have been killed and remains committed to the agenda that bin Laden put before them,” said Gates.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen said that the US will get hold of al-Qaida’s new leader.
“He and his organization still threaten us,” said Mullen. “As we did both seek to capture and kill and succeed in killing bin Laden we certainly will do the same thing with Zawahri.”
Gates said that Pakistan remains an important ally and the lines of communication between the two countries must remain open.
“We need each other and we need each other more than just in the context of Afghanistan,” he said. “Pakistan is an important player in terms of regional stability and in terms of Central Asia and so my view is that this is a relationship where we just need to keep working at it.”
Admiral Mullen said that terrorists in South Asia seek to get their hands on Islamabad’s nuclear technology.
“Of those things that I fear in the future it is the proliferation of that technology and it is the opportunity and the potential that it could fall into the hands of terrorists, many of whom are alive and well and seek that in that region and that is of great interest I think to our country and certainly to the rest of the world,” he said.
Robert Gates is likely to retire in the last of this month, and CIA director Leon Panetta will head Pantagon.
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