KABUL - New U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta arrived in Afghanistan on Saturday, saying he believed the strategic defeat of al-Qaida was within reach if the U.S. could kill or capture up to 20 remaining leaders of the core group and its affiliates.
Panetta, on his first trip since taking over the Pentagon on July 1, told reporters before arriving in Kabul that now was the time - in the wake of the May killing of Osama bin Laden - to intensify efforts to target al-Qaida's leadership.
"We're within reach of strategically defeating al-Qaida and I'm hoping to be able to focus on that, working obviously with my prior agency as well," said Panetta, who ran the CIA until the end of June.
"Now is the moment following what happened with bin Laden, to put maximum pressure on them. Because I do believe that if we continue this effort that we can really cripple al-Qaida as a threat to (the U.S.)."
Panetta declined to offer all the names of al-Qaida leadership the U.S. was looking at. But he singled out two men: Anwar al-Awlaki, an American imam who has become a senior leader of al-Qaida's Yemen-based affiliate, and Ayman al-Zawahri, who replaced bin Laden as the head of al-Qaida.
Panetta said he believed Zawahri was living in Pakistan's tribal areas, and "he's one of those we would like to see the Pakistanis target."
"I would say somewhere around 10 to 20 key leaders that between Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, AQIM (al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb) in North Africa. Those are, if we can go after them, I think we really can strategically defeat al-Qaida," he said.
Panetta added that the U.S. military and the CIA were engaged in a number of operations focusing on militants in Yemen. He did not give specifics.
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