UK lowers terrorist threat level (AP)

LONDON – Britain has lowered its assessment of a terrorist attack from "severe" to "substantial," Home Secretary Theresa May said Monday.

The new alert level meant that the risk of an attack is a "strong possibility" and may occur "without further warning."

May did not explain the reasons that led to the change, saying only that it was based on the "very latest intelligence" and considering factors including capability, intent and timescale.

There are five levels of threat, from low, meaning an attack is unlikely, to critical, meaning an attack is imminent. "Substantial" is the third level.

The threat level was last at critical in June 2007, following an attack on Glasgow Airport and failed car bombings in central London.

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Experts say terrorism less of a threat to US (AP)

ASPEN, Colo. – Terrorism experts say terrorism is now less of a threat to the United States because of increased vigilance.

Former national intelligence director John Negroponte said Thursday during the Aspen Institute's Aspen Ideas Festival that the United States has made considerable progress bolstering its defenses.

The director of a commission that analyzed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Philip Zelikow, says U.S. operations against terrorism abroad explain why there hasn't been another such domestic attack against the United States.

According to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, Zelikow says the United States has broken up terrorist groups and set them on the run.

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Information from: The Daily Sentinel, http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_re_us/storytext/co_terrorism_threats/42076945/SIG=10r2rn1gf/*http://www.gjsentinel.com

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Germany says Islamic terrorism still a threat (AP)

BERLIN – Germany's top security official said Friday that the terrorist threat to the country hasn't decreased and the number of radicals continues to grow, even with the death of Osama bin Laden.

Security officials saw no reason to lower Germany's threat level following the death of the al-Qaida leader, said Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich, presenting the annual report by Germany's domestic intelligence agency.

"The Islamist terrorist threat is widely varied and has not concentrated on a single leader of al-Qaida for a long time," he said.

"We have had a general threat situation in Germany and Europe that has not changed for two years, but there are no concrete dangers."

Though there have been several unsuccessful or foiled attacks by Islamic radicals in Germany, the first fatalities attributed to a Muslim extremist came this year in March when a 21-year-old Kosovo-born ethnic Albanian allegedly gunned down two U.S. airmen outside Frankfurt's airport.

Overall, the number of people in Germany linked to radical Islamic groups rose to 37,470 in Germany in 2010, up from 36,270 the year before, according to the report from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Most of those — 31,370 — were connected to Turkish groups, nearly all of them in Milli Gorus, a group whose founder advocates creating an Islamic state in Turkey.

Most worrying was the increase in numbers in "Salafi" groups that espouse an ultraconservative interpretation of Islam and have been especially successful at recruiting young people, said Heinz Fromm, who heads the domestic intelligence agency.

He noted that the suspect in the March killing of the two U.S. airmen outside Frankfurt's airport had allegedly been inspired by watching Salafi videos online.

"Not every Salafi is a terrorist but almost every terrorist that we are aware of has had contact with a Salafi," Fromm said.

In other findings, the report said the number of right-wing extremists dropped to 25,000 last year from 26,600 in 2009 — but the number considered to be neo-Nazis rose to 5,600 from 5,000.

About one-fifth of the neo-Nazis are now considered part of a growing group of violence-prone extremists who target leftist radicals, Friedrich said.

"Their target group is no longer foreigners, but political enemies," he said.

Incidences of right-wing criminality dropped to 15,905 in 2010 from 18,750 in 2009 — or 4,521 cases in 2010 when excluding "propaganda" crimes like the scrawling of swastikas or other banned symbols on walls.

By contrast, far-left criminality, for which there is no "propaganda" category, was down to 3,747 in 2010 from 4,734 in 2009.

Friedrich warned, however, that a spike in leftist criminality — such as the torching of cars in Berlin and elsewhere and attacks on police — in the first five months of 2011 indicate that that drop was an anomaly.

The number of left-wing extremists grew to 32,200 last year from 31,600 in 2009. That included a rise to 6,800 violent radicals from 6,600 the previous year.

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US refocuses on home-grown terror threat (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States vowed Wednesday to pursue the "utter destruction" of Al-Qaeda, while refocusing its counter-terrorism strategy to combat the threat of home-grown terror.

The new strategy comes on the 10th year of the US-led "war on terror," launched by former president George W. Bush after the deadly September 11 attacks on the United States.

It is a "pragmatic, not ideological" approach to counterterrorism that "formalizes" the administration's approach since January 2009, said John Brennan, President Barack Obama's top counterterrorism advisor.

The new strategy, developed after US commandos killed Osama bin Laden on May 2 in Pakistan, also reflects "the extraordinary political changes" sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, Brennan said.

"This is the first counterterrorism strategy that designates the homeland as a primary area of emphasis in our counterterrorism efforts," said Brennan, who is also deputy national security adviser for homeland security.

-- Al-Qaeda still in the US crosshairs --

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The principal focus is "Al-Qaeda, its affiliates and its adherents," said Brennan, speaking at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

"We aim to render the heart of Al-Qaeda incapable of launching attacks against our homeland, our citizens, or our allies, as well as preventing the group from inspiring its affiliates and adherents to do so," he said.

"This is a war -- a broad, sustained, integrated and relentless campaign that harnesses every element of American power," he said.

"And we seek nothing less than the utter destruction of this evil that calls itself Al-Qaeda."

With US forces pulling out of Iraq and preparing for a draw-down in Afghanistan, Brennan all but ruled out foreign adventures.

"If our nation is threatened, our best offense won't always be deploying large armies abroad but delivering targeted, surgical pressure to the groups that threaten us," he said.

President Obama, speaking at a press conference Wednesday, said that US military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan have served to "severely cripple Al-Qaeda's capacities" and have "decimated some of the upper ranks of Al-Qaeda."

The terror network is "having a great deal of difficulty operating and financing themselves. We'll keep the pressure on," Obama said.

Brennan dismissed the new Al-Qaeda leader, Egyptian-born Ayman al-Zawahiri, as "an aging doctor who lacks bin Laden's charisma and perhaps the loyalty and respect of many in Al-Qaeda."

-- The "lone wolf" threat --

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The US strategy also takes into account the growing threat of domestic "lone wolf" attackers radicalized by online preachers.

This is "the first counter-terrorism strategy that focuses on the ability of Al-Qaeda and its network to inspire people in the United States to attack us from within," Brennan stressed.

The best known of these attackers is Major Nidal Hasan, the US Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people and wounding 32 more in a November 5, 2009 shooting rampage at the Fort Hood army base.

On Wednesday, three men arrested in a sting operation for planning to attack two New York synagogues and to shoot down US military planes were each sentenced to 25 years in prison.

On June 23, two US men were charged with plotting to attack a military center in the northwestern US city of Seattle with machine guns and grenades, allegedly hoping to kill more people than Hasan did at Fort Hood.

The new counter-terrorist strategy also focuses on threat from Al-Qaeda affiliates in places like Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and north Africa.

"As the Al-Qaeda core has weakened under our unyielding pressure," said Brennan, "it has looked increasingly to these other groups and individuals to take up its cause, including its goal of striking the United States."

Separately, Brennan said that Iran and Syria "remain leading state sponsors of terrorism."

"Hezbollah and Hamas are terrorist organizations that threaten Israel and our interests in the Middle East. We will therefore continue to use the full range of our foreign policy tools to prevent these regimes and terrorist organizations from endangering our national security," he said.

Regarding Pakistan, Brennan acknowledged that the relationship "is not without tension or frustration," but said that both sides were working to overcome differences.

"I am confident that Pakistan will remain one of our most important counterterrorism partners," he said.

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Government: No known terror threat tied to July 4 (AP)

WASHINGTON – U.S. intelligence officials say there is no specific or credible information that terrorists intend to strike over the upcoming holiday weekend.

Documents found in Osama bin Laden's home show that, as recently as February 2010, al-Qaida was considering plots against the U.S. during major holidays, including Independence Day.

Bin Laden was killed in a U.S. military operation in May.

A joint FBI and Homeland Security Department intelligence bulletin, obtained by The Associated Press, shows that counterterrorism officials remain concerned that terrorists will target large gatherings in urban areas across the U.S. Yet they have no specific intelligence about an attack tied to the July 4 holiday.

Counterterrorism officials say the driving factor for the timing of attacks is whether the operatives are ready to carry out the plan.

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New Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri: Do his flaws diminish group's threat? (The Christian Science Monitor)

Washington – An irritable micro-manager disliked by even the organization’s most loyal foot soldiers – it’s not the sort of description you’d expect to hear of the mastermind of a global terrorist network.

But that is precisely the description that intelligence analysts tend to give of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the new head of Al Qaeda.

Not only is he widely believed to be a less-than-effective manager, US officials say, Mr. Zawahiri does not have the sort of “peculiar charisma” that Osama bin Laden did, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told reporters last week.

RELATED: The top 5 Al Qaeda members still hiding in Pakistan

And that’s not all: Mr. bin Laden “was much more operationally engaged than we have the sense Zawahiri has been,” Mr. Gates noted.

Such comments seem to give the impression that US defense officials were privately high-fiving each other after hearing of Zawahiri’s ascension last week to Al Qaeda’s helm.

So, just how much does the Pentagon have to worry about the former Egyptian physician, now the de facto number one arch-nemesis of the US military? Pentagon officials have made it clear they still take the threat of Zawahiri seriously.

“I think we should be mindful that this announcement by Al Qaeda reminds us that despite having suffered a huge loss with the killing of bin Laden and a number of others,” Gates said, “Al Qaeda seeks to perpetuate itself, seeks to find replacements for those who have been killed, and remains committed to the agenda that bin Laden put before them.”

The Pentagon has also emphasized that the new leader of Al Qaeda, believed (for what ita€™s worth, considering where bin Laden was found) to be hiding in the ungoverned tribal areas of Pakistan, should expect to be the target of a robust and ongoing manhunt.

“I’m not sure it’s a position anybody should aspire to, under the circumstances,” Gates said.

The conventional wisdom, however, is that ita€™s a position that the ambitious Zawahiri has long coveted.

“He has been sort of a climber, not only within Al Qaeda but in the larger jihadist movement,” says Brian Fishman, terrorism research fellow at the New American Foundation. “He’s attached himself to a rising star within the organization – bin Laden – and that’s how he’s seen, as somebody who isn’t always piously committed, but brings with him a sense of personal aggrandizement.”

That kind of mercenary approach, however, can have practical advantages, Mr. Fishman says. In the internal debate about whether Al Qaeda should maintain a strict ideological litmus test for members, or “get as many people into the tent as possible,” Zawahiri is a member of the latter camp, Fishman says, which could translate into more Al Qaeda followers.

“He’s still very ideologically rigid – I don’t want to give the impression that he’s some out-of-the-box thinker,” Fishman says, “but he’s always been most concerned about creating political effect on the ground.”

Yet Zawahiri’s desire to create these political effects could also cause a rift with the Taliban, analysts say. The interim commander of Al Qaeda, Saif al Adel – who, like Zawahiri, is Egyptian – was viewed as having close ties to the Afghan Taliban. Zawahiri, on the other hand, has been interested in having Al Qaeda “step to the forefront and seize political power,” Fishman says, and this could involve bypassing the Taliban.

One quality that has made Al Qaeda particularly resilient in the past, however, has been its willingness to cede political authority to the groups on the ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan “that have a much more organic social base,” Fishman says.

The widely heralded defeat that the US military handed Al Qaeda in Iraq’s Anbar Province came about when the terrorist group “overreached” and got too ideological, he adds. Zawahiri for his part had argued that for political reasons, Al Qaeda would have been better off not enforcing its strict ideology and making accommodations with locals in the name of political harmony.

Any savvy leader will not want to make a similar mistake in Afghanistan. “My gut says that Zawahiri wouldn’t really be stupid enough to challenge the Afghan Taliban directly in a place like Afghanistan or Pakistan,” Fishman says.

But tensions between the two US enemies remain. The Afghan Taliban has long held that it is valid to fight the US in Afghanistan and Pakistan, “but they didn’t approve of 9/11, and they don’t want to take steps that might cause a political reaction in the United States” that might inspire US leaders to push to extend its presence in Afghanistan longer than it already plans to, Fishman says.

The Taliban’s publicity shop, for its part, has downplayed any tensions, says Jeffrey Dressler, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. “If you’re going to be seen as an authentic Islamic extremist organization, you can’t break with a group like Al Qaeda,” he adds.

Other defense analysts agree. “Everybody is quick to comment on how Zawahiri’s a polarizing figure, uncharismatic, disagreeable – people can’t stand him,” Mr. Dressler says. “If all of that was going to be an obstacle, however, he never would have been approved. He’s a very skilled military tactician and planner,” he adds. Al Qaeda leaders “discussed this – and appointed him anyway.”

RELATED: The top 5 Al Qaeda members still hiding in Pakistan

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Bashir jailing will not end threat: analysts (AFP)

JAKARTA (AFP) – The jailing of radical Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir on terrorism charges will not diminish his influence on militant extremists unless he is strictly controlled behind bars, analysts said Friday.

An Indonesian court jailed the wiry old preacher for 15 years on Thursday after a four-month trial for funding a terrorist group that was planning attacks against Westerners and political leaders.

It was the culmination of a decade of trials and allegations against the 72-year-old alleged co-founder of the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network responsible for a string of attacks including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people.

Many expect him to die behind bars but International Crisis Group analyst Sidney Jones said it was not the end of the Bashir story.

"I think the officials need to ensure that he does not lead a regular praying session from inside," she told AFP.

"He's got to be treated like a high-risk individual rather than a celebrity. The challenge is to keep him from contact with other inmates who could be affected by his preaching."

It is a challenge Indonesia has ignored in the past, according to senior police, who say the mainly Muslim country's so-called deradicalisation programme has been an arrant failure.

Independent studies of the country's prisons have shown they are breeding grounds for groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah and Bashir's latest creation, the extremist Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid, founded in 2008.

Prison mosques are used to spread jihadist messages, convicted terrorists form "shadow governments" inside jails, and radical ideologues such as Bashir are allowed to run religious studies sessions and use mobile phones.

Research released last month by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute found recidivism was a major concern, as was the radicalisation of the non-jihadist inmate population and even the guards.

Indonesian terror expert Mardigu W. Prasantyo said an inmate like Bashir should be banished to a "remote island" to keep him from doing more harm inside the notoriously corrupt and poorly managed prison system.

"Terrorists who are imprisoned here become first-class citizens. The toughest thugs in prison are even afraid of them," he told AFP.

"The inmates don't see them as having committed any crime. They're good at praying, have gentle eyes and they become shoulders to lean on."

Many analysts say that an effective police crackdown on Jemaah Islamiyah has diminished Bashir's influence and led to a dangerous splintering of Indonesian jihadist groups into harder to track freelance cells.

But Prasantyo estimated the bearded, bespectacled cleric still had about 35,000 fanatical followers who would hang on his every word, whether he is behind bars or not.

Prosecutors had demanded a 20-year life sentence for Bashir, who was found guilty of channelling about $50,000 to the so-called Al-Qaeda in Aceh group in 2009.

Police say the outfit was planning assassinations and Mumbai-style attacks by highly-trained suicide gunmen.

Bashir rejects all allegations of materially supporting terrorists, but openly calls for jihad against the West and Indonesia's secular national ideology.

For decades he has agitated in mosques, Islamic schools and through radical groups for the creation of an Islamic state under strict sharia law. Previous stints behind bars have done nothing to reform his thinking.

"I reject this (sentence) because it is cruel and disregards Islamic sharia law. This ruling is by the friends of the devil and it is haram (forbidden) for me to accept it," he said in response to the judge's ruling.

University of Indonesia expert Andi Widjajanto said even if Bashir is effectively neutralised behind bars, a new spiritual leader would take his place as the patriarch of local militants.

"The new leader will try to prove he's worthy by launching a big attack of some sort," he said.

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US cites terror threat in new Philippine warning (AP)

MANILA, Philippines – The U.S. State Department has renewed its travel warning for the Philippines, saying terrorist attacks could occur in the restive southern region and even in the capital, Manila.

The latest travel advisory for U.S. citizens replaces a similar warning issued in November. The Philippine government has complained that such warnings fail to take into account an improving security situation.

Al-Qaida-linked militants have been blamed for bombing attacks and kidnappings in the southern Philippines, where Muslim rebels have been fighting for self-rule for decades.

Wednesday's U.S. advisory says that indiscriminate attacks also could target sites in Manila, including areas such as airports and malls.

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Pakistan's LeT threat to US: security chief (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Pakistan-based Islamic militant group blamed for the assault on Mumbai could also pose a threat to the United States, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said Thursday.

Napolitano, who visited India last week for talks on anti-terrorism, renewed her assertion that Lashkar-e-Taiba -- which means "The Army of the Pure" in Urdu -- was in the same league as Al-Qaeda in US eyes.

"LeT is a potent terrorist organization. It could be construed as a threat to the United States. It certainly is to India," Napolitano said.

"It is Al-Qaeda-like in its strength and organization," she said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think-tank.

India believes the LeT and the Pakistani intelligence service staged the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, which left 166 people dead and severely strained relations between the nuclear-armed South Asian rivals.

David Coleman Headley, a Pakistani American who admitted scouting sites for the Mumbai attacks, has testified in a trial in Chicago that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence has supported the LeT despite an official ban on the group.

Napolitano stayed tight-lipped about her talks with India on Lashkar-e-Taiba but said that her counterparts did not ask her specifically to ask Pakistan to turn over suspects in the Mumbai assault.

"The United States believes that it is in everyone's interest for India and Pakistan to be able to work together," she said.

Relations between India and the United States, the world's two largest democracies, have improved rapidly in the past decade. But many Indian policymakers are uneasy about the close US cooperation with Pakistan.

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Shoe bomb still a threat to aviation: top US official (AFP)

LAS VEGAS (AFP) – Shoe bombs are still a threat so for now US air travelers will have to continue to take their shoes off before airport screenings, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Thursday.

Napolitano said her department has been looking for a technological solution to the shoe problem, drawing applause at a conference of travel and tourism industry leaders.

She quickly added: "We're not there yet, so wear slipons."

The shoe requirement is probably the most hated symbol of the raft of security measures imposed on air travelers after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Industry leaders have complained about a one-size-fits-all approach to aviation security that they say has discouraged travel and is costing billions of dollars in revenues.

"It's a technological problem," said Napolitano.

"Why? Because we know from a risk-based standard that our adversaries have tried before and are always attempting to see what they can get onto a plane that would constitute enough explosive material to blow a plane up," she said.

"That threat has not disappeared, and if anything even the public revelations out of the material seized out of this compound where bin Laden was confirmed that aviation remains a target."

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Bomb threat in London ahead of queen's Irish visit (AP)

By DAVID STRINGER and RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press David Stringer And Raphael G. Satter, Associated Press – Mon May 16, 10:42 am ET

LONDON – Dissident Irish republican terrorists issued a bomb threat for central London, police said Monday, hours ahead of Queen Elizabeth II's groundbreaking but sensitive visit to Ireland.

Encouraged by the largely successful peace process in Northern Ireland, the queen will on Tuesday become the first British monarch to set foot in the Republic of Ireland, where troops and even ground-to-air missiles were being deployed amid tight security.

When a British sovereign last visited, a full century ago, all of Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom.

The monarch's presence is resented by some in Ireland who bristle at the legacy of British rule, with some predicting violent street clashes and others fearing a terrorist attack.

London's Metropolitan Police said the bomb warning — which was received late on Sunday — did not include a specific location or time.

Officers were conducting sweeps across the city and closed down to traffic parts of the British capital, including roads near the queen's official residence.

"Londoners should continue to go about their business as usual but we encourage the public to remain vigilant," police said in a statement.

A police official, who spoke on customary condition of anonymity in line with policy, confirmed that the warning related to a threat from a dissident Irish republican group.

The bomb warning was the first serious threat to Britain since 2001, the last time republican dissidents made a successful attack in England, exploding a car bomb near a shopping center in west London, wounding 11 people.

It follow fears that escalating violence in Northern Ireland would spread to Britain, and comes after the government raised the threat level related specifically to Irish terrorism.

"The threat level to Great Britain from Northern Irish- related terrorism remains at substantial, which means that an attack is a strong possibility," the Home Office said in a statement. "There is a continuing need for vigilance and the public should report any suspicious activity to the police."

In Ireland, security for the queen's tour will far exceed measures used for the 1979 visit of Pope John Paul II or for the visits of U.S. President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

The national police force has canceled all leave and drafted in officers from rural areas, boosting the security detail to 8,500. They also have borrowed two mobile water cannons from Northern Ireland's police.

The queen's four-day trip to Dublin, Kildare, Tipperary and Cork comes as a Catholic-Protestant government in the neighboring British territory of Northern Ireland has just been re-elected, marking another peace milestone.

The Irish Republican Army violence of decades past — counting among its victims the queen's cousin, Lord Louis Mountbatten, killed when the IRA blew up his yacht in 1979 — has given way to the group's 2005 renunciation of violence. Only small splinter groups still plot bloodshed across the border.

One of the queen's first actions Tuesday will be to lay a wreath at a Dublin memorial honoring Ireland's rebel dead, a surprisingly direct gesture toward Britain's opponents in the bloody 1919-21 guerrilla war of independence.

The queen's trip will highlight Ireland's many charms, from the Guinness brewery to its Europe-leading horse racing industry, and stunning historical monuments such as the medieval Rock of Cashel. She will be joined by her husband, Prince Philip.

The Irish Defense Forces have deployed ground-to-air missiles at key locations, plan to shut down airspace over Dublin and other locations in tandem with the queen's movements, and are keeping more than 1,000 troops in reserve.

(This version corrects the time element in the first paragraph)

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Libyan combat stymies moves on antiaircraft threat (AP)

WASHINGTON – The fierce combat in Libya has unleashed a once-hidden arsenal of portable anti-aircraft missiles that the government fears could easily be siphoned off to terror groups, giving rise to a potential threat to commercial aviation that the U.S. is only beginning to confront, government officials and arms experts said.

The fears are compounded by suspicions that Libyan government and opposition forces are both deploying fighters with ties to terrorists and mercenaries. With more than 20,000 missile launchers estimated in Libya, there have been unconfirmed reports that some anti-aircraft weapons have already been funneled to North African militants, but amid the vast caches wielded by both sides, there is no solid evidence yet that terrorists have them.

Troops loyal to Moammar Gadhafi and opposition fighters have made frequent use of Russian-built anti-aircraft weapons in the two-month-long civil war, including aging 30-year-old shoulder-fired models to advanced truck-mounted missile launchers, according to battlefront accounts and an array of combat photographs and video.

The availability of man-portable air defense systems, also known as MANPADS, across the world's conflict zones has long worried counterterrorism officials. Passenger flights have never been targeted by such missiles inside the U.S., but there have been nearly a dozen lethal strikes over the past decade in Africa and Asia.

Surveillance by aerial drones and diplomatic pressure on Libya's African neighbors to police its porous borders may be the best, if limited, actions the U.S. can take for now. U.S. military planes can fly above the range of the missiles and use electronic jamming to elude them, but detection and evasion gear are considered too bulky and expensive to install in the world's civilian aircraft fleets.

Congressional officials are pressing U.S. diplomatic and military officials for details on how they might counter the anti-aircraft missile threat in Libya, but said they have heard few specifics. Late last month, Edward R. Royce, R-Calif., chairman of a House subcommittee on terrorism, nonproliferation and trade, urged Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to step up efforts to monitor and secure antiaircraft weapons — even as rebel units were reportedly receiving new shipments of armaments from abroad.

"The department should be in contact with neighboring countries to exercise vigilance in locating and securing any missiles that may be transiting out of Libya," Royce wrote in a letter to Clinton. He urged State Department officials to press rebels to keep tight control over any such missile stockpiles. The U.S., he added, should mount "an aggressive missile destruction and recovery program" once a new Libyan government is installed.

A State Department spokesperson, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the department's efforts, said an internal task force has turned urgent attention to the threat. The spokesperson also said officials were in contact with the Libyan opposition and international organizations inside the country.

Even those first steps are unlikely to be effective in quickly securing the anti-aircraft missiles and launchers in use in Libya, experts said.

"The problem is that you have amorphous groups on both sides and all sorts of weaponry are coming into play from unregulated caches," said a former assistant secretary of state, Lincoln P. Bloomfield Jr., who headed a Bush administration effort to recover and dispose of anti-aircraft weapons. "The primary objective is to make sure these missiles don't cross Libyan borders. In theory, that's the goal, but it's not clear it can be done in the middle of a hot war."

The U.S. general who led the early American airstrikes enforcing the Libyan no-fly zone estimated earlier this month that Gadhafi's military amassed as many as 20,000 portable missile launchers before the conflict started. That would outstrip similar caches of terror groups and militants in Afghanistan and Iraq in recent years.

"Many of those we know are now not accounted for, and that's going to be a concern for some period of time," Gen. Carter Ham, head of the U.S. Africa Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month.

Chad's President Idriss Deby Itno said last month that a cache of surface-to-air missiles and launchers taken from liberated Libyan stocks already reached al Qaeda's North African contingent, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Similar accounts have come from Algerian officials but the reports have yet to be confirmed, the U.S. officials said.

The fluid contours of the conflict, with war-torn cities changing hands repeatedly, make it nearly impossible to closely monitor stockpiles. Shoulder-fired launchers can easily be concealed, even from airborne U.S. Predator drones and spy planes, and truck-mounted units can be disassembled or masked by canopies. Poorly armed rebels will not likely give up their limited MANPADS supplies, and Gadhafi's forces would presumably be hostile to any effort to turn over arms while the U.S. and allied forces enforce the no-fly zone.

Bloomfield, who was special envoy for MANPADS threat reduction in the final year of the Bush administration, worked with the State and Defense departments to track and dispose of weapons of mass destruction and conventional arms. Since 2003, the U.S. has led international efforts to recover 32,000 MANPADS from Afghanistan to the Ukraine — a figure dwarfed by congressional estimates that there are 500,000 to 750,000 worldwide.

The cost of outfitting large passenger planes with defensive devices was deemed too expensive — as much as $3 million per jet. Since 1975, missiles fired at civilian planes in nearly a dozen incidents have killed more than 200 people from Africa to Central Asia. A shoulder-fired missile was blamed for deaths of 11 crew members aboard an Ilyushin cargo plane downed in Somalia in March 2007. Two U.N. transports were struck by missiles over Angola in 1998 and 1999, leaving 23 dead. Two missiles fired by terrorists barely missed a chartered Israeli commercial jet taking off in November 2002 with 271 passengers and crew near Mombasa, Kenya.

U.S. anti-missile efforts involve negotiations with legitimate governments, said J. Christian Kessler, former director of the State Department's Office of Conventional Arms Threat Reduction, which works with the Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement to counter the anti-aircraft threat. "That process simply can't function if you're dealing with a hostile government and an unorganized opposition at war."

The U.S. has worked to reduce stockpiles of such missiles in 20 other countries with smaller arsenals than Libya, and when the U.S. began renewing ties with Gadhafi's government, it pressured the regime to disassemble its nuclear weapons program and chemical arms stockpile. But there was no similar anti-missile effort in Libya that might have limited the current battlefield proliferation.

"We really didn't have our finger on MANPADS as an agenda item," said Bloomfield, now chairman of the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan global security group in Washington. The issue never re-emerged, he said, because of growing U.S. strains with Gadhafi over the precise reciprocal steps to resolve Libya's culpability in the 1988 bombing of a Pan AM flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people.

The missiles sighted in Libyan battle zones are mostly Russian, typically shoulder-fired SA-7 Strela missiles and launchers that date to the 1970s, said Matthew Schroeder, an arms expert with the Federation of American Scientists who has examined images of nearly four dozen separate anti-aircraft weapons in use on the Libyan front. Some SA-7s are likely too old to function.

The head of Russia's Center for Analysis of World Arms Trade reported last month that Gadhafi's forces had also amassed between 600 and 1,500 1980s-vintage Russian MANPADS. And recent Associated Press photos and other images from the Libyan front show both sides wielding advanced Strelets vehicle-mounted launchers capable of firing new SA-24 Grinch missiles. KBM, a Russian arms exporting company, confirmed a recent sale of an unspecified number to Gadhafi's military, according to Aviation News, a trade publication.

The SA-24 has a longer range — accurate to 11,000 feet — than the 1980s Russian models, Schroeder said. Its bulkier vehicle mount would make it harder to hide, said Pieter Wiezeman, a senior arms expert with the Stockholm International Peace Institute, a nongovernment group in Stockholm.

But a carefully-concealed truck-mounted weapon would still be mobile and compact enough to be taken anywhere in Africa, he said, adding: "If someone gets near a runway with some of those missiles in a 4-by-4 truck, how are you going to stop them?"

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