No Shelter for bin Laden, US warns

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, December 19, 2001

No Shelter for bin Laden, US warns

The United States threatened Tuesday to take strong measures, including military action, against any country that would give refuge to Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

''I just think any country in the world that would knowingly harbor bin Laden would be out of their minds,'' Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told a news briefing at the Pentagon.

''I think they've seen what happened to the Taliban, and I think that's probably a pretty good lesson to people not to do that,'' he said.

Wolfowitz said the U.S. does not know where bin Laden is after more than two months of military campaigns in Afghanistan. ''We don't know where he is now and he could be on the run.''

Asked whether bin Laden might be hiding in one of the caves in the Tora Bora area of eastern Afghanistan, Wolfowitz said, ''It's possible he could be dead at the bottom of one of them.''

In Brussels on Tuesday, meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the U.S. will concentrate on the search for bin Laden in mountainous hideouts in Tora Bora.

''The task is still ahead of us,'' Rumsfeld said. ''It's going to be tough, dirty, hard work.''

At the Pentagon news briefing, Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, suggested the search for bin Laden may take time, saying the Tora Bora area has so many caves.

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