Mounting pressure on Pakistan, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown today said its security forces must do more to ‘break’ al-Qaeda and find Osama bin Laden.
Mr. Brown told the BBC that eight years after the 2001 attacks on the US, nobody had been able “to spot or detain or get close to” the al-Qaeda leader.
Pakistan’s security services must join the “major effort” to isolate the terrorist group, he warned.
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He said more progress was needed “in taking out” Bin Laden and his number two Ayman Zawahiri.
Mr. Brown said progress had been made against the Taliban in south Waziristan by Pakistan’s government, but added: “We’ve got to ask ourselves why, eight years after September the 11th, nobody has been able to spot or detain or get close to Osama bin Laden, nobody’s been able to get close to [Ayman] Zawahiri, the number two in al-Qaeda“.
Mr. Brown said: “And we’ve got to ask the Pakistan authorities, security services, army and politicians to join us in the major effort that the world is committing resources to, and that is not only to isolate al-Qaeda, but to break them in Pakistan.”
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Mr. Brown said he would be talking to Pakistan's leaders and convey them that if the international community is putting so much effort into building up Afghanistan to control its own affairs "then Pakistan has got to be able to show that it can take on al-Qaeda".
He said the terrorist network posed a "continuing threat", adding: "I believe that after eight years, we should have been able to do more, with all the Pakistani forces working together with the rest of the world, to get to the bottom of where al-Qaeda is operating from."
He added that, eight years on, "we have got to see more progress in taking out these two people at the top of al-Qaeda, who have done so much damage and are clearly the brains behind many of the operations aimed at Britain".
Mr. Brown has spoken broadly the same points to BBC and SKY News during the Commonwealth summit on Sunday.
He told Sky News that "We believe Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan...we will want to see more evidence of Pakistan action, not just troops in south (of) Waziristan but the whole of government machinery".
Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is due to meet Mr. Brown in 10, Downing Street next week.