BOB EDWARDS, host: It appears that Osama bin Laden has abandoned his base in southern Afghanistan. Bin Laden is the Saudi millionaire the US holds responsible for bombing US embassies in Africa last summer. The attacks left hundreds dead. The US indicted bin Laden in connection with the bombings and is offering a $5 million reward for his capture. Afghanistan has provided him with sanctuary, but it's not clear where he is now. NPR's Mike Shuster reports.
MIKE SHUSTER reporting:
After the American missile attack last August on Osama bin Laden's base in Afghanistan, the US put intense diplomatic pressure on Afghanistan to expel him. Washington warned the Taliban militia in control of most of Afghanistan that it could expect further missile attacks if bin Laden did not leave the country. The most recent warning came two weeks ago, when assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth met with a Taliban leader in Pakistan. The pressure may have worked. This week, the Taliban first announced they were restricting bin Laden's communications and contacts with the outside world. Then two days ago, word came from the Taliban that bin Laden was gone. Yesterday, Inderfurth called in a New York-based Taliban representative to ask where bin Laden is, according to State Department spokesman James Foley.
Mr. JAMES FOLEY (State Department Spokesman): His whereabouts have been shrouded in some mystery and confusion over the last days and we're looking to see if the Taliban can shed some light on his whereabouts. We do not have information that he's not in Afghanistan.
SHUSTER: Speculation about his whereabouts is plentiful. One Arabic-language newspaper reported that bin Laden had simply changed his base within Afghanistan. A report on the Internet put bin Laden in Chechnya, in the Russian Caucusus. Authorities there say it's not true. There have also been reports in recent months that bin Laden might have been considering moving his operations to Iraq. Intelligence agencies in several nations are looking into that. According to Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of CIA counterterrorism operations, a senior Iraqi intelligence official, Farouk Hijazi(ph), sought out bin Laden in December and invited him to come to Iraq.
Mr. VINCENT CANNISTRARO (Former Chief of CIA Counterterrorism Operations): Farouk Hijazi, who was the Iraqi ambassador in Turkey, went to Afghanistan in December with the knowledge of the Taliban and met with Osama bin Laden. It's known through a variety of intelligence reports that the US has, but it's also known through sources in Afghanistan, members of Osama's entourage let it be known that the meeting had taken place.
SHUSTER: Iraq's contacts with bin Laden go back some years, to at least 1994, when, according to one US government source, Hijazi met him when bin Laden lived in Sudan. According to Cannistraro, Iraq invited bin Laden to live in Baghdad to be nearer to potential targets of terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. There is a wide gap between bin Laden's fundamentalism and Saddam Hussein's secular dictatorship. But some experts believe bin Laden might be tempted to live in Iraq because of his reported desire to obtain chemical or biological weapons. CIA director George Tenet referred to that in recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee when he said bin Laden was planning additional attacks on American targets.
Mr. GEORGE TENET (Director, CIA): One of my greatest concerns, Mr. Chairman, is the serious prospect that bin Laden or another terrorist might use chemical or biological weapons. Bin Laden's organization is just one of a dozen terrorist groups that have expressed an interest in or have sought chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear agents. Bin Laden, for example, has called on the acquisition of these weapons as, quote, "a religious duty" and noted that, quote, "How we use them is up to us."
SHUSTER: Pressure on Afghanistan to oust bin Laden has also come from Saudi Arabia, which is one of the world's few governments to have supported the Taliban militia. Last year, the Saudis withdrew their financial support and closed a Taliban office in Riyadh. The Saudis were displeased with the Taliban support for bin Laden, who seeks the overthrow of the Saudi royal regime and the expulsion of American troops from Saudi Arabia.
Vincent Cannistraro says late last year, there was also an attempt to kill bin Laden in Afghanistan. He was poisoned.
Mr. CANNISTRARO: American intelligence sources continue to say that he's gravely ill but without specifying the nature of the injury. But it is clear that he's a lot weaker and a lot more feeble than he used to be.
SHUSTER: Given all this, it just might be possible that the Taliban have made the decision to expel bin Laden out of fear of American attacks and in the hope they might gain international recognition for their government in Afghanistan if they do. Mike Shuster, NPR News, New York.
EDWARDS: The time is 19 minutes past the hour.
