Obama urges anti-terror cooperation after Norway attack (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama offered condolences to Norway after deadly twin attacks and urged countries around the world to step up cooperation to combat terror.

Speaking during a meeting with New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key, Obama called the attacks "a reminder that the entire international community has a stake in preventing this kind of terror from occurring."

"We have to work cooperatively together on intelligence and in terms of prevention of these kinds of horrible attacks," the president said.

Obama, who visited Oslo in 2009 to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, fondly recalled his welcome in the NATO ally and said he "wanted to personally extend my condolences to the people of Norway."

"Our hearts go out to them and we will provide any support we can to them," said Obama, who earlier received a briefing on the attacks from his top anti-terrorism adviser John Brennan.

A blast tore through government buildings and a gunman opened fire at a youth meeting of the ruling party, leaving at least 80 people reported dead.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States "strongly condemns today's attacks in Oslo and Utoya Island.

"We stand with the people of Norway in this moment of sorrow and offer our deepest sympathies to the families and loved ones of those injured and killed," said Clinton

State Department spokeswoman Heide Bronke Fulton called the attacks "despicable" and said the embassy in Oslo has urged all US citizens to avoid the center of the Norwegian capital.

"The US has reached out to the Norwegian authorities to offer assistance, but there have been no specific requests from the Norwegians thus far," Fulton told AFP.

New Zealand's prime minister, in his meeting with Obama, also voiced his "sympathies and concerns" over the attacks in Norway.

"If it is an act of global terrorism, then I think that what it shows is no country, large or small, is immune from that risk," Key said.

"And that's why New Zealand plays its part in Afghanistan as we try and join others like the United States in making the world a safer place," he said.

New Zealand has sent 70 elite special force troops and 140 reconstruction personnel to Afghanistan.

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AP Interview: Ex-CIA chief on al-Qaida after Osama (AP)

DUBLIN – The killing of Osama bin Laden will spur the al-Qaida terror network to back off his grandiose plans for more 9/11-style attacks in favor of more frequent, smaller strikes on easier targets, former U.S. spy chief Michael Hayden forecast Monday.

Hayden, who directed both the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency under President George W. Bush, also emphasized that the smartest way for America to monitor its enemies would be to keep targeting aides, not the kingpins directly.

"Let's say someone was trying to spy on the NSA. They would have been silly to target me. I don't use the phone much," Hayden told The AP on the fringe of an intelligence-gathering conference in Ireland.

"My communication's mostly face to face, one on one. No, you should target my secretary. You want to know what's going on? Tap her phone," he said in a phone interview.

Hayden was the main speaker Monday at an annual forum organized by the Mercyhurst College Institute for Intelligence Studies of Erie, Pennsylvania. During the interview he said the West was better off with Osama bin Laden dead than in custody — even though a living bin Laden represented a potential gold mine of intelligence.

He cautioned that the May 2 killing of the al-Qaida chieftain would speed the terror network's current transition to a higher volume of less sophisticated attacks.

"The common instinct from intelligence officers is that capture is always better than kill. But in this one particular case, even me as a career intelligence officer, I'd say that capturing him (bin Laden) would have been very problematic," Hayden said.

"Bin Laden in American custody would have made almost all Americans, Britons, many others in the West, all of them targets for al-Qaida retribution because we had bin Laden in our custody."

He said evidence emerging from the computer and paper records seized at bin Laden's Pakistan hideaway suggest a commander determined to repeat the epic scale and mass slaughter of early al-Qaida attacks, even though more rigorous security has made such strikes exponentially harder to pull off.

Al-Qaida under bin Laden's direction was "committed to the high-casualty attack against an iconic target: the World Trade Center, embassies in East Africa, multiple airliners over the Pacific or Atlantic," Hayden said.

"Future attacks are going to be more numerous — but less complex, less well organized, less likely to succeed, and less lethal if they do succeed. I think the killing of bin Laden will accelerate that change."

The 66-year-old Hayden, a retired four-star Air Force general, served as NSA director 1999-2005 and as CIA director 2006-2009. The NSA oversees phone-tapping and other electronic surveillance at home and abroad using the warrantless powers of the Patriot Act, while the CIA seeks to track America's enemies using satellite and drone footage and a network of spies.

The deployment of remotely controlled drone aircraft to monitor suspected al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan and, unofficially, in Pakistan was "an absolute war-winner," he said.

The drone footage delivered "an unblinking stare" that allows intelligence analysts to learn the comings and goings of a Khyber Pass village "as well as their own hometown."

"The drones provide us exquisite intelligence to target individuals who have leadership positions in al-Qaida and to deplete their bench of expertise," he said.

He said planting CIA agents or informers into the center of a terrorist operation was "incredibly slow moving" and meant "working in ambiguous legal areas." He said the ideal informant was someone, such as a message courier, who was privy to a terror cell's activities but not a direct participant.

Hayden said the ethical dilemma of a spy's life could be summed up by the lyrics of a Bob Dylan song: To live outside the law, you must be honest.

"The contradictory point is this. Dishonest people spy for money. On one level, spying is inherently dishonest. You're in the business of getting someone to betray the inner workings of their organization in strict confidence to you," he said.

Hayden said the sharing of anti-terror intelligence among America's myriad security and law-enforcement agencies had to be carefully controlled, partly because improved surveillance and eavesdropping powers have created an overwhelming tsunami of data.

"Most people couch this as good versus evil: Sharing intel is good and restricting it evil. Well, let me tell you, sharing everything can lead to an army private releasing hundreds of thousands of documents onto the internet," he said, referring to last year's mass publication of nearly 500,000 U.S. Army field reports from Iraq and Afghanistan on WikiLeaks.

Hayden rejected any suggestion that the NSA and CIA should merge. He compared the idea to forming a joint team of soccer and cricket players "just because they both use a ball and play on grass."

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Online:

Mercyhurst College conference, http://globalintelligenceforum.com/

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Uganda on terror alert, 1 year after last attack (AP)

KAMPALA, Uganda – Ugandan police are issuing a terror alert, days before the one-year anniversary of the East African nation's worst terror attack.

Police spokeswoman Judith Nabakooba says police have learned of "credible fresh terror threats" from Somalia's al-Shabab militant group. She says police fear an attack between Thursday and next Tuesday. She urged citizens to be vigilant.

Al-Shabab — Somalia's most dangerous militant group, which has ties to al-Qaida — claimed responsibility for the double suicide bomb attack in Uganda's capital in last July during the World Cup final. The blasts killed 76 people.

Uganda is a major contributor to the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia, which supports Somalia's weak government in its fight against al-Shabab.

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NYPD beefs up hotel security after Afghan bombing (AP)

NEW YORK – The New York Police Department is stepping up counter-terrorism measures at hotels in the wake of a terrorist attack in Afghanistan.

Police spokesman Paul Browne says the move wasn't prompted by a specific threat in the city. But the nation's biggest police department is taking no chances as it learns more about the attack on Kabul's Inter-Continental Hotel, which is frequented by foreigners.

Insurgents attacked the hotel with suicide bombers, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades late Tuesday Kabul time.

Two NATO helicopters later fired rockets that killed gunmen on the rooftop of the hotel.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which comes nearly a week after President Barack Obama announced he would end the American combat role in Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

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Taliban show resolve to fight on after bin Laden (AP)

ISLAMABAD – A double Taliban suicide attack that killed 66 paramilitary police recruits represented the deadliest terrorist strike in Pakistan since the killing of Osama bin Laden. It sent a strong signal that militants mean to fight on and to try to avenge the al-Qaida leader.

Friday's attack came as both the Pakistani and Afghan wings of the Taliban have been carrying out attacks to prove they remain a potent force and bolster their profiles in case peace talks prevail in Afghanistan.

U.S. and Afghan officials have said they hope the Afghan Taliban will use bin Laden's death as an opportunity to break their link with al-Qaida — an alliance the U.S. says must be severed if the insurgents want peace in Afghanistan. But Afghan officials and Pakistani experts say any severing of ties would not happen anytime soon, if at all.

"The Taliban want to prove that bin Laden's killing did not really affect them," said Rahimullah Yusafzai, a Taliban expert in the Pakistani city of Peshawar who has interviewed their reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar.

"I don't think anybody is talking peace at this stage," Yusafzai said. "Everybody is wanting to score something on the ground. I think the spring fighting, the summer fighting will continue and it will be worse than last year."

In claiming responsibility for Friday's attack in northwest Pakistan, which also wounded about 120 people, the Taliban said it was avenging the May 2 death of bin Laden. It cited anger at Pakistan's military for failing to stop the unilateral U.S. raid on bin Laden's hideaway.

"The Pakistani army has failed to protect its land," Ahsanullah Ahsan, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, told The Associated Press in a phone call.

In their communications, militants often try to tap into popular sentiments in Pakistan, where anti-Americanism is often stronger than fears of Islamist militants. This is despite militant attacks over the last four years claiming the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians.

Before the Taliban claimed responsibility, Liaqat Ali Khan, a senior police official in Peshawar near where the attack occurred, said the primary suspects were militants fighting security forces in the nearby Mohmand tribal region. The Pakistani Taliban are a loose collection of insurgent groups, and some news reports later continued to cast doubt on the claim that Friday's attack was meant to avenge the killing of bin Laden.

In Afghanistan, where bin Laden's death has coincided with the beginning of the spring fighting season, the Taliban have launched a series of attacks including a two-day battle in the insurgents' stronghold of Kandahar in the south.

"Violence has increased because this is part of the peace process," said Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, a top adviser to Afghan President Hamid Karzai who is active in efforts to reconcile with the Taliban. "When you get to the point where everybody wants to position themselves to get the benefit of a dialogue and discussion, then you naturally expect there will be a lot of efforts to strengthen positions."

Opinion is mixed on whether the Taliban will split with al-Qaida in hopes of reconciling with the Afghan government. The bond was largely built on a personal relationship between Mullah Omar and bin Laden. Now that the al-Qaida leader is dead, members of the Taliban's top leadership council might argue for distancing the group from the mostly Arab terrorist network, but there has been no concrete signs of that yet.

The goals of the two movements are not believed to be closely aligned. While al-Qaida is focused on worldwide jihad against the West and establishment of a religious superstate in the Muslim world, the Afghan Taliban have focused on their own country and have shown little to no interest in attacking targets outside Afghanistan. Yet the two movements have long expressed formal support to one another.

"I think there are factions within the Taliban that want to split with al-Qaida and I think they will be winning the argument," said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a political science professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences.

But breaking with al-Qaida would mean forgoing some explosives expertise and reliable funding channels in the Middle East.

Gen. David Richards, the head of Britain's military, has said that bin Laden's death had left some Afghan insurgents panicked about their ability to raise money. Links between al-Qaida and the Taliban were greater than previously known, he said.

Getting the Taliban to split with al-Qaida is just one of many barriers toward reaching a political resolution to the nearly decade-long war.

The U.S.-led coalition hopes to hold ground in southern Afghanistan gained as a result of the addition last year of an extra 30,000 American troops. The Taliban's goal remains undermining the Afghan government, discrediting its security forces and driving the nearly 100,000 U.S. troops and other foreign forces out of the country.

The Pakistanis, long accused of maintaining ties with militants, hold a key role in getting top Taliban leaders to negotiate. Yet their political clout with both Afghanistan and the U.S. has been tarnished — at least temporarily — by bin Laden's death on Pakistani soil.

U.S. officials argued that Pakistani officials were either incompetent or complicit in allowing bin Laden to hide in Pakistan for years in a house north of the capital, Islamabad. And Karzai didn't hesitate to repeat his refrain that the war against terrorists should be waged in Pakistan and not in Afghan cities and villages.

"The relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan is not good right now," said Gen. Abdul Hadi Khalid, former Afghan deputy interior minister. "Now, Karzai will not trust Pakistan in the fight against terrorism or in helping Afghanistan with the reconciliation process."

Jafar Rasouli, a Kabul-based analyst on international affairs, said relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan are at a low mark. "For six years they (Pakistani officials) have kept Osama bin Laden in that location and they kept lying to Afghanistan and the world," Rasouli said.

Pakistan officials claim they did not know that bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad.

Pakistan's military must tread a fine line when dealing with its domestic audience. While the public backs its operations against militant groups that stage attacks in Pakistan, many Pakistanis are sympathetic to the aims of insurgents in Afghanistan. They view the insurgents as a legitimate force resisting a foreign occupation.

While the U.S. accuses Pakistan of playing a double game — supporting and fighting militants — most Pakistanis avoid openly criticizing the powerful military establishment. That makes it difficult to ascertain their true sentiment about how the military is balancing its various alliances.

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Associated Press Writers Riaz Khan in Shabqadar, Munir Ahmed in Islamabad, Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan, and Heidi Vogt, Rahim Faiez and Amir Shah in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

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White House: High vigilance after bin Laden raid (AP)

WASHINGTON – The White House says it's continuing in a state of high vigilance following the mission against Osama bin Laden and is focused on the fact that terrorists may launch fresh attacks to avenge his death.

Spokesman Jay Carney commented Friday after a pair of Taliban suicide bombings in Pakistan killed at least 80 people. The al-Qaida linked militant group that claimed responsibility cited anger at Pakistan for failing to stop the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden there on May 1.

Carney said the Obama administration takes very seriously the fact that al-Qaida is weakened, but not dead. He added that it remains vigilant about the fact that terrorists, whether they are organized or lone wolves, may try to respond with revenge attacks.

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