ISLAMABAD, Aug 9 (AFP) - US President George W. Bush has been quick to capitalise on Pakistan`s breakup of an Al-Qaeda cell, but Pakistani officials said his hopes of bagging the prize quarry Osama bin Laden in time to boost his re-election prospects may prove tougher to realise.
The alleged key operatives captured in recent weeks in Pakistan and Britain, in the throes of plotting fresh terror strikes around the world, were far more significant than Al-Qaeda`s ever-elusive figurehead.
"These are the real people, this is the operational cadre of the group," said a senior intelligence official, referring to alleged key operatives Naeem Noor Khan, a 25-year-old Pakistani computer whizz, and Tanzanian suspect in the 1998 East Africa US embassy bombings Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani.
The pair were the top-ranking of the 18 Al-Qaeda suspects rounded up in Washington`s key war-on-terrorism ally Pakistan since mid-July and had been in close touch with senior Al-Qaeda planner Abu Eisa Al-Hindi in Britain.
"Looking at the information we have got from these men, we think bin Laden is not very active, and unable to plan," said the official, who is closely associated with the crackdown.
"Frankly we don`t have information of his whereabouts. All we have is that bin Laden is alive and somewhere either in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan, or inside Afghanistan. But from the interrogation of the arrested lot, we have not been able to figure out his location."
The current focus of Pakistani operations, he said, was not on bin Laden but on pursuing other Al-Qaeda masterminds still at large in the country.
"Now we are more focussed in eliminating the group and using all our resources to track down the two real masterminds, Libyan Abu Fajr and the Egyptian called Hamza."
"The information that we have gathered now does not point to OBL`s involvement in current attack planning of the group."
Bush nevertheless has seized on the coups.
"Because of our leadership and work with the Pakistani authorities, Al-Qaeda is now on the run in Pakistan. We`ve taken the lead in the world, and the world has changed for the better," he boasted last Thursday.
It was an effective counter-punch to his predecessor Bill Clinton`s criticism of the ratio of US military resources devoted to the Al-Qaeda hunt in Afghanistan, compared with Iraq, where no weapons of mass destruction and little Al-Qaeda connection have been uncovered.
"Why did we put our number one security threat in the hands of the Pakistanis with us playing the supporting role and put all our military resources into Iraq, which was I think at best our number five security threat?" Clinton said in an interview with CBC television.
"How did we get to the point where we have 130,000 troops in Iraq and 15,000 in Afghanistan?"
The timing of the captures in Pakistan has led many analysts to voice suspicions of a link with Bush`s re-election campaign.
"These arrests are a plus point for the Bush administration," said Riffat Hussein, head of strategic affairs studies at Islamabad`s Quaid-e-Azam University.
"Bush and his team can say that not only their war on Al-Qaeda was real, but they have also made a tangible progress, and they have taken point to these high-level arrests as indication of the effectiveness of the strategy that they are pursuing.
"I am sure that in the presidential debate this is going to be a big plus talking point for George Bush."
In the early days of the crackdown US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage visited Pakistan.
According to a senior government official who could not be named, Armitage nudged the Pakistani leadership to swiftly step up their Al-Qaeda hunt.
"He didn`t mention the upcoming elections, he simply said it was important that we act fast to capture them," the official, who asked not to be named, told AFP.
"Armitage did not directly link his prompting to the forthcoming presidential elections, but his visit was aimed towards this end."