Al-Qaeda Southeast Asia network intact, report says

Al-Qaeda Southeast Asia network intact, report says

Reuters, New York

Osama bin Laden's Southeast Asian network, built up over the past
decade, is largely intact and possibly more dangerous than
before, the New York Times reported in its online edition on
Monday quoting intelligence officials.

Citing officials in several countries in the region, the
newspaper reported the area's al-Qaeda network may not only be
more deadly and more virulently anti-American than it was a year
ago, but also harder to detect.

Al-Qaeda's men have become less likely to gather in camps,
many of which have been bombed or closed, and the most important
leaders of al-Qaeda's Southeast Asian network are at large, ready
to activate sleeper cells, according to these officials, the
newspaper said.

As a result, Asian and Western officials in the region are
virtually unanimous in expressing fears that the bombing in Bali
on Oct. 12 should be seen as a warning to the United States and
its allies, the newspaper reported.

Officials acknowledge that their picture of the al-Qaeda
operation is incomplete, but that it is as much what they don't
know than what they do that alarms them, the newspaper said.

Hundreds of men in Southeast Asia have trained at al-Qaeda
camps in Afghanistan and the Philippines, but who and where they
are is unknown, according to an American intelligence official,
the Times said.

While many of the group's training camps have been destroyed,
al-Qaeda operatives only need a few safe houses to teach how to
assemble weapons, the Times said, quoting a Philippine
intelligence official.

Bin Laden, believed by U.S. officials to have been behind the
Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, is thought to have sent
some of his most trusted lieutenants to Southeast Asia in the
1990s to blend into their communities, often through marriage,
the Times said.

Indonesian authorities are now pursuing Riudan Isamuddin,
better known as Hambali, a Qaeda operative who has been
instrumental in just about every terror action against the United
States in the region in the last 10 years, according to the
paper.

Some investigators believe Hambali masterminded the Bali
bombing, the Times said.

The Times quoted a senior Philippine intelligence official as
saying that the United States has done a great deal in
dismantling the terrorist machine in Afghanistan, but that the
al-Qaeda "network and contacts in Southeast Asia are still in
place, and it is more radical now."