The United States has about 10,000 troops in Afghanistan a year after going to war there but still has no idea whether fugitive al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is alive, the Pentagon said today.
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Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he could not confirm the authenticity of an audio recording broadcast by Qatar's al-Jazeera television yesterday that the network said was apparently the voice of bin Laden threatening more attacks on America.
"I've not heard it. I know that there are people looking at it. I'm told there's no way to know when it was made," Mr Rumsfeld told reporters at a Pentagon briefing.
"So I have still, to this moment, not seen anything since last December that one can with certainty say that he's alive or functioning," he said. "So he's therefore either alive and well, or alive and not too well, or not alive."
A videotape released by US authorities in December 2001 showed bin Laden appearing to admit to at least prior knowledge of the September 11th attacks.
Speaking exactly one year after the US military began a bombing campaign in Afghanistan that toppled that country's Taliban leadership and drove out al Qaeda, Mr Rumsfeld said again that the US war on terrorism declared after the September attacks were not about one man.
"This is not about him. It is a problem that's much bigger than one individual," he told reporters.
"I tried to dissuade people from personalising this global war on terrorism into the face or name of a single individual - that that would be unwise and misguided, misdirected," Mr Rumsfeld said.