Rice: Clinton did not leave plans to fight al-Qaida

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice challenged former President Bill Clinton's claim that he did more than many of his conservative critics to pursue al-Qaida, saying in an interview published yesterday that the Bush administration aggressively pursued the group even before the September 11, 2001, attacks.

"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years," Rice said during a meeting with editors and reporters at the New York Post.

The newspaper published her comments after Clinton appeared on "Fox News Sunday" in a combative interview in which he defended his handling of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and said he "worked hard" to have the al-Qaida leader killed.

"That's the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now," Clinton said in the interview. "They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try, they did not try."

Rice disputed his assessment.

"The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false and I think the 9/11 commission understood that," she said.

Rice also took exception to Clinton's statement that he "left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy" for incoming officials when he left office.

"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida," she told the newspaper, which is owned by News Corp, the same company that owns Fox News Channel.

In the interview, Clinton accused host Chris Wallace of a "conservative hit job" and asked: "I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked, 'Why didn't you do anything about the Cole?' I want to know how many people you asked, 'Why did you fire Dick Clarke?"'

Rice portrayed the departure of former White House anti-terrorism chief Richard A. Clarke differently, saying he "left when he did not become deputy director of homeland security."

The reference to the Cole related to the attack on the USS Cole in 2000.

The interview has been the focus of much attention drawing nearly 1.2 million views on the Internet video site, YouTube.

Rice questioned the value of the dialogue. "I think this is not a very fruitful discussion," she said. "We've been through it. The 9/11 commission has turned over every rock and we know exactly what they said."

Senator Hillary Clinton saw it differently.

"I just think that my husband did a great job in demonstrating that Democrats are not going to take this," she told Newsday on Monday.

Taliban says bin Laden still alive

Dubai-based Al Arabiya television yesterday quoted a Taliban official as saying al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was alive and in good health.

The Arabic channel said its Pakistan bureau had received a call from the unnamed Taliban official a few days after a leaked French secret document said Saudi intelligence believed bin Laden died last month in Pakistan.

"The official said bin Laden was alive and that reports that he is ill are not true," said Bakr Atyani, Al Arabiya's Islamabad correspondent. "The Taliban checked with members who are close to al-Qaida that these reports are baseless."

Bin Laden was last seen in a video statement aired to coincide with the November 2004 US presidential elections.

A report in French regional daily L'Est Republicain last week quoted a document from the DGSE foreign intelligence service, saying the Saudi secret services were convinced bin Laden had died of typhoid.

Saudi Arabia said on Sunday it had no evidence that bin Laden was dead. French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said as far as he knew the Saudi-born militant was alive.

Source: China Daily