Latest Reports Put Bin Laden in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON —  The latest in a series of often-conflicting intelligence reports suggests that Osama bin Laden remains alive and possibly in Afghanistan, U.S. and Afghan officials said Sunday, as Senate leaders insisted that the war will succeed only if the elusive Al Qaeda leader is captured.

In Afghanistan, leaders of the country’s new interim government reached an agreement that would place as many as 3,000 members of an international peacekeeping force in Kabul, the capital. But the launch of the British-led force failed to signal the end of a military campaign that has evolved into an open-ended manhunt for Bin Laden and the Taliban’s top leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar.

Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah said Sunday that Bin Laden may still be in the country and that U.S. airstrikes should continue “as long as terrorist cells are in Afghanistan.”

Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), head of the Select Committee on Intelligence, declared the trail cold but said Bin Laden remains a threat as long as he is at large.

“The latest intelligence we had indicates that the high probabilities are that Bin Laden is still alive,” Graham said Sunday on CNN’s “Late Edition,” although he declined to elaborate. “He has eluded capture in Afghanistan, and therefore there is the possibility that he has slipped out of the country.”

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said the war “will not be complete until we have found him.”

Asked if he agreed, Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.), the assistant Republican leader, said, “I think so, and I think President Bush made it very clear he’s going to” capture Bin Laden.

That appears to go beyond the terms outlined by the president, who has defined success in the war more broadly. At an impromptu news conference at his Crawford, Texas, ranch Friday, Bush described success in Afghanistan as “Taliban gone, the country secure, the country stable . . . Al Qaeda cells rounded up, Taliban fighters brought to justice.” Bush did emphasize, however, that “you don’t need to worry about whether or not we’re going to get [Bin Laden], because we are.”

The agreement reached between the Afghan government and the international peacekeepers would allow the security force to operate beyond Kabul, although Abdullah declined to outline the specifics of the deal. British Royal Marines have been in the capital since Dec. 22 and made their first joint patrols with Afghan troops Saturday. Of the 3,000 to 5,000 troops authorized by the U.N. Security Council, one-third will be used to maintain security and the rest for logistical and humanitarian tasks.

In the military campaign, the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division prepared to replace Marines at a base in southern Afghanistan.

“The United States is repositioning some of its military forces where required to prepare for and support the president’s campaign against terrorism and to support efforts to identify, locate and hold accountable terrorists and those who support and harbor them,” said Sgt. Maj. Rich Czizik, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., which is directing the war.

Among the Army division’s tasks will be overseeing a detention center for a select group of Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners, which rose from 136 on Saturday to 150 on Sunday. Of the detainees being interrogated by U.S. and international forces, 139 are in Kandahar. Eight, including American John Walker Lindh, are aboard the Navy assault vessel Peleliu in the Arabian Sea; two are at Bagram air base in eastern Afghanistan; and one remains in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. The Pentagon is preparing a longer-term holding facility for the detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they could face military tribunals.

Czizik said Sunday that Marines were working to recover the remains of a helicopter that was abandoned by its crew after a “hard landing” northwest of Kandahar about 3:30 a.m. Saturday. The cause of the accident was unknown, he said, but it was not the result of hostile fire. None of the passengers or crew was injured, and all returned to the base, he said.

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Reuters contributed to this report.