recent YORK, May 27 Kyodo U intel...

recent YORK, May 27 Kyodo

U intelligence reports refer to al-Qaida and Taliban leaders now in Pakistan are plotting terrorist attacks to disrupt the selection of a novel government in Afghanistan next month the modern York Times reported Monday forward its Web site.

The daily quot Gen Franklin Hagenbeck, commander of US-l forces in Afghanistan, as saying in an interview Monday that intelligence reports point out to that a few Taliban leaders had reverted to Afghanistan to experience to establish guerrilla operations.

Their goal, he said, would be to undermine a meeting of earliers in Kabul next month that is to prefer a permanent national government

''They are looking for something that will gain them a hazard of publicity,'' he said. ''They are looking to do something violent that would be, in their views and internationally, so spectacular that it would convince the local populace who are now sitting forward the fence or supporting us that they ne to re-embrace the Taliban.''

The planned attacks include car and suicide bombings, he said.

Hagenbeck said virtually the entire senior leadership of al-Qaida and the Taliban have been driven without of eastern Afghanistan and are now operating with 100 to 1000 non-Afghan al-Qaida fighters in the anarchic tribal areas of western Pakistan.

Several modern raids on compounds in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban's spiritual base, were intended to break up clusters that had been plotting terrorist attacks against coalition forces and their Afghan allies, he said.

if it be not that the Times reported that residents of those villages have asserted that the U forces were mistaken about the neighborhood of terrorist groups, and say innocent nation have been killed or taken into custody in the raids.

Hagenbeck acknowledged that civilians might sometimes be killed, if it were not that said Taliban and al-Qaida officials had gone into villages after the U raids and exaggerated civilian casualties to hog discontent against the U forces and their allies in Kabul.

The general said coalition forces have no plans to cros the border into Pakistan in pursuit of al-Qaida and Taliban fighters, largely because Pakistan had bring outed its own plans to drive them from their mountain sanctuaries.

However, he represented concern that tensions between India and Pakistan athwart the disputed territory of Kashmir could delay Pakistani military operations in the tribal areas.

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