Al Qaeda severely degraded: US

Al Qaeda's network has been "severely degraded" by joint US-Pakistani efforts, the US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan said Saturday.

A few hours before Richard Holbrooke made his comments, a US drone killed 12 militants in Pakistan's North Waziristan region on the Afghan border, which Washington says is used by the Afghan Taliban to attack US-led NATO troops in Afghanistan.

"The Al Qaeda network has been severely degraded in recent years in efforts that both our countries work on," Holbrooke said at a joint news conference with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi.

Asked whom he would hold responsible if Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and the Afghan Taliban chief, Mullah Mohammad Omar, were hiding somewhere along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Holbrooke demurred.

"Many of their associates have been apprehended or killed. Even those two people ... are still at large, but they are under intense pressure," he said.

Holbrooke praised Pakistan's sacrifices in the fight against militants on its soil and said he hoped more would be achieved.

"In regard to the war itself, Pakistan has made progress, but it doesn't mean that we've reached the end of the road. This is a tough, long struggle and much more needs to be done," he said.

Pakistani action against militants on the border is seen as important for bringing stability to Afghanistan, where US forces are leading a major NATO offensive against the Taliban.

Pakistan is under growing US pressure to crack down harder on Afghan Taliban using Pakistani sanctuaries to attack NATO forces in Afghanistan.

However, on the same day in Yemen, 11 people, including seven military personnel, were killed in a suspected Al Qaeda attack on Yemeni intelligence headquarters in the southern port city of Aden.

The higher security committee, in an official statement, said preliminary investigations "indicate that the criminal attack carries the marks of the Al Qaeda terror network," the state news agency Saba reported.

Agencies