WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that none of the top leaders of the al-Qaida terrorist network or the defeated Taliban regime is in U.S. hands and hinted for the first time that some of them might have fled to Iran.
Rumsfeld said terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, the most sought-after fugitives, have not been found.
"We don't have the top ones," Rumsfeld said in an interview with The Sun at his Pentagon office. "There are some of them in [Afghanistan]. ... There are some of them out of the country - some of those are in Pakistan. Some are undoubtedly in Iran."
Because Iran, like Pakistan, has "a big long border" with Afghanistan, he said, some of the leadership has likely fled west and crossed into the neighboring Muslim state.
Rumsfeld's statement marked the first time that a senior U.S. official has mentioned Iran as a possible destination, though when pressed, the defense secretary said there was no hard information that any of the leaders were there. He did not suggest that Iran was harboring al-Qaida or Taliban leaders.
Meanwhile, Rumsfeld said U.S. forces have found no evidence of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons after inspections of 37 of 48 suspected sites in Afghanistan.
U.S. forces have 45 Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in custody and continue to interrogate and try to identify them. Asked whether those in custody include senior officials, Rumsfeld said: "Yeah, depending on your definition."
Appearing relaxed and wearing a blue fleece vest after a Christmas trip to his vacation home in Taos, N.M., Rumsfeld sat at a small table in his office, a long rectangular room dominated by a portrait of George C. Marshall, one of his predecessors and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's top military adviser in World War II.
Rumsfeld rocked back in his chair and occasionally hopped up to flip through papers at his stand-up wooden desk.
He said the search goes on for bin Laden, but that his location remains a mystery and the intelligence information often is conflicting.
"He may be in Pakistan. He may be dead. He may be in Afghanistan. He may be lots of places," Rumsfeld said. "If he's not in Afghanistan, we'll find him wherever he is. His organization is not functioning smoothly in terms of new initiatives. He's busy hiding and running."
Afghan fighters and U.S. troops are searching in Afghanistan for Omar, the Taliban leader, Rumsfeld said. "We still think he's in the country," the defense secretary said. "He's not a well-known, prominent world traveler.
"Those senior leaders have been running and hiding and letting other people get killed for weeks and weeks and weeks," Rumsfeld said. "They're very careful."
Rumsfeld guffawed when asked whether the Afghanistan campaign would be incomplete without the capture of the top leaders. "Our goal is to stop these terrorist networks and to stop the countries that are harboring terrorists," he said. "And we've said from the outset this wasn't about Osama bin Laden. ... Needless to say, we'd like to get the leaders. If you handed me [bin Laden] today, there are still eight, 10, 12 people in al-Qaida alone that could operate that network and would. ... We've got to stop the whole thing. It's a very tough job."
For the time being, said Rumsfeld, no more U.S. troops will be sent into the mountains of Tora Bora, where bin Laden and some of his most hardened fighters could still be hiding.
The defense secretary said that job would be left to the small groups of U.S. special forces and Afghan fighters. He estimated that it would take "much of January" to finish searching the caves in the area.
"If we decide that it can be usefully done, we'll increase the number of Americans involved," he said. "To the extent that we need additional people we will add them."
At a briefing later in the day, Rumsfeld confirmed that Taliban or al-Qaida fighters being detained by U.S. Marines at the Kandahar airport will probably be transferred to a detention facility being readied at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, although that would not take place for several weeks.
Rumsfeld, in the interview, said there are about 48 sites in Afghanistan suspected of containing chemical, biological or nuclear materials. Thirty-seven of those have been checked and contained no evidence of such weapons of mass destruction.
Rumsfeld confirmed that one site included warheads made of depleted uranium, a heavy metal that is slightly radioactive. "We checked it out. At least with respect to that one site, it turned out to be DU," he said.
The U.S. military, which uses depleted uranium in some of its shells for its superior armor piercing ability, says the material has a chemical toxicity that in high doses can cause long-term health effects should it enter the body in fragments or dust.
Some environmental and arms control groups have pressed for a ban on such shells, noting health concerns.
