US: Washington has ordered the hunt for Osama bin Laden to be intensified along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in the hope of capturing him before the US presidential election in November.
President Bush has approved a new plan to step up the hunt for the al-Qaeda leader and for Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban.
According to the New York Times, the mission has been given to Task Force 121, a commando team of special operations forces and CIA officers created in the autumn to hunt for Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden. They are to operate as the spearhead of the 11,000 US forces already in Afghanistan.
US officials said better intelligence, the melting of the mountain snow and a refocusing of resources from Iraq would all help.
Pakistan's government has ordered its army to step up action in its tribal areas along the border.
The push by Pakistani troops has exacerbated tensions with the local population, who are mainly Pashtun, as are most of the Taliban. Two missiles were fired yesterday at a Pakistani checkpoint.
The incident came 24 hours after 13 people were killed in what Pakistan's military initially claimed was a shoot-out between troops and a minibus carrying suspected militants. Local people insist they were innocent civilians. President Pervez Musharraf ordered an inquiry and offered to pay compensation to the families.
The government last week told its forces in tribal areas to issue ultimatums to tribal leaders to hand over or inform on any al-Qaeda or Taliban operatives in their areas.
The new US push comes after a visit by the CIA director, George Tenet, to Pakistan last month.
Mr Musharraf has been reluctant to confront Islamist fundamentalists, but US officials were reported yesterday as saying that his resolve had been stiffened by two recent assassination attempts on him by Islamist militants.
The New York Times quoted a US official overseeing the new drive against Bin Laden as saying of Mr Musharraf: "Two assassination attempts close together tend to be life-focusing. He is now willing to be even more helpful." - (Guardian Service)