New Urgency Sensed in Hunt for Bin Laden

There is a “renewed sense of urgency” in the hunt for top al-Qaida and Taliban fugitives and it is only a matter of time before Osama bin Laden is captured, the U.S. military said Wednesday. As Pakistan interrogated al-Qaida and Taliban suspects caught in a military sweep through its rugged border region, Lt. Col. Matthew Beevers dismissed speculation that American forces had closed in on bin Laden. If coalition forces knew where bin Laden was, “we’d already have him,” Beevers said. But he said there was “a renewed sense of urgency” in the hunt for top fugitives, born partly of hopes for improved intelligence. “The sands in their hour glass are running out,” he said of bin Laden and other fugitives such as Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. “We remain committed and reaffirm our effort to track these guys down and get ’em.” Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan refused to speculate on whether any specific al-Qaida figure, including bin Laden, had been captured or whether he might have escaped the security operation. ABC News, meanwhile, reported that he had slipped back into Afghanistan from Pakistan. Full Story