Weak Al-Qaeda could splinter: Gates (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday that Al-Qaeda had been seriously degraded and could split into a set of regional terror groups now that Osama bin Laden was gone.

"First of all, they have been significantly weakened. There's just no two ways about it," Gates told CNN's "State of the Union" program, explaining that bin Laden was not the only Al-Qaeda figure to have been killed recently.

"We have taken a real toll on them over the last, particularly the last two years," he said.

Al-Qaeda on Thursday named long-time number two Ayman al-Zawahiri as its new leader after bin Laden was killed by US commandos in the dead of night in a May 2 raid on his hideout in Pakistan.

Zawahiri has been portrayed by US officials as a pale imitation of bin Laden, someone, they say, who lacks his predecessor's charisma and leadership skills and is also a divisive figure who could fracture Al-Qaeda.

"The question is whether Zawahiri, the new leader taking bin Laden's place, can hold these groups together in some kind of a cohesive movement, or whether it begins to splinter, and they become essentially regional terrorist groups that are more focused on regional targets. And we just don't know that yet," Gates said.

Like his slain Saudi-born co-conspirator, Zawahiri, a 59-year-old Egyptian, has been in hiding since the United States declared its war on terror after the September 11, 2001 attacks and is widely believed to be in Pakistan.

Gates, 67, leaves his post at the end of the month. His designated replacement is the current CIA director, Leon Panetta, who will soon turn 73.

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Pakistan-based LeT 'as dangerous' as Al-Qaeda: US (AFP)

NEW DELHI (AFP) – The US Homeland Security chief said on Friday she viewed the banned Pakistani Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) as an equal in danger to the Al-Qaeda network.

Janet Napolitano, speaking on a trip to New Delhi where she met top Indian security officials, was asked about the threat posed by the group blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people were killed.

"It is one that seeks to harm people and the US perspective is that the LeT is an organisation which is in the same ranks of Al-Qaeda-related groups," Napolitano told reporters after day-long talks in New Delhi.

India believes the LeT and the Pakistani intelligence service staged the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, which severely strained ties between the countries and led to a breakdown in their peace talks.

David Coleman Headley, an American-Pakistani giving evidence in a Chicago court in connection with the attacks in India's financial capital, has admitted to his links with the LeT and Pakistani intelligence.

The group, founded to fight India's presence in the disputed territory of Pakistan, denied any involvement in the Mumbai carnage.

Napolitano said the US had worked with India on investigations into the Mumbai attacks and would grant Indian investigators further access to Headley, the key government witness in the trial of an alleged accomplice.

"The United States has given India full access to the witness and once the case (trial) is over more access will be given. It is an example of how our two countries operate," she said.

A twice convicted drug dealer, Headley admitted to taking part in the Mumbai plot after prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty or to allow him to be extradited to India, Pakistan or Denmark on related charges.

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