Fri Mar 5,10:42 AM ET
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghanistan's foreign minister sought Friday to play down reports of a heightened campaign to capture Osama bin Laden and said there had been no intelligence breakthroughs about the al-Qaida leader's location.
The United States has pledged a retooled and intensified offensive in the next few months to track top Taliban and al-Qaida figures along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The U.S. military in Afghanistan has said it is confident that bin Laden will be found this year.
Foreign Minister Abdullah took a more cautious tone.
"The missions now — I wouldn't say it is as very special as is mentioned in some corners," he said after a ceremony with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw inaugurating a higher-security British Embassy in the Afghan capital of Kabul.
The hunt "has been part of the efforts for the past two years, and it will continue," said Abdullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name.
Straw, speaking earlier to a news conference, declined to address questions about unconfirmed media reports of ongoing U.S. military sweeps in southern and southeastern Afghanistan.
Straw said only: "We would all like to see Osama bin Laden captured one way or the other."
Asked about any new intelligence, Abdullah said, "The intelligence continues — I wouldn't consider it a new thing."
U.S. military officials have said they are planning a spring offensive in Afghanistan in the hopes of capturing bin Laden, former Taliban leader Mullah Omar and their associates.
Officials have said they are shifting members of Task Force 121 from Iraq to Afghanistan, after the elite team's role in capturing Saddam in December.
Revised U.S. tactics would include settling U.S. forces in communities, in hopes of improving local intelligence-gathering, the Americans have said.
Pakistan officials have pledged intensified sweeps on their own side of the border. Pakistan officials have taken a harder line in the search in recent weeks, including prosecuting local chiefs who failed to produce demanded information on any terror suspects hiding in border areas.
Fri Mar 5, 6:05 PM ET
By MARA D. BELLABY, Associated Press Writer
MOSCOW - When President Vladimir Putin announced his choice for the nation's No. 2 job, the Russian media seized on the mysterious, one-year gap in Mikhail Fradkov's resume that seemed to hint at a secret KGB background.
They weren't looking for a scandal, however.
They wanted to know if this portly career bureaucrat, who was approved as prime minister Friday by the Russian parliament, was really one of Putin's men — the former spies and military officers who swept in on his coattails more than four years ago and hold a quarter of the nation's top political jobs.
Putin, who is expected to easily win a second term in the March 14 election, has packed his government with "men with epaulettes." But whereas previously these men tended to focus on national security, now they hold decision-making jobs in practically every sector — from the economy to the courts to media oversight, said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist who conducted a groundbreaking study of Russia's ruling elite.
They serve as regional envoys, Cabinet members, deputy ministers, presidential advisers and lawmakers. Some even retain their status as "active reserve officers," reporting to both their former spy agency bosses and their new department heads.
"With such big growth ... one has to ask why ... and what this means," Kryshtanovskaya said.
Critics say the rise of ex-service and military people known as "siloviki," who value loyalty and discipline and tolerate little dissent, has left the nation in the grip of authoritarianism, turning back the clock to Soviet times. They point to the crackdown on Russia's independent media, the weakening of parliament and opposition parties, strong nationalistic rhetoric and calls for the renationalization of natural resources as examples of siloviki influence.
Proponents, however, note that Soviet-era spies were highly educated and often more broadminded; unlike most segments of Soviet society, they had access to the West. Additionally, the security sector's focus on order, the rule of law and a resurgent Russia appeals to average citizens, tired of the chaos, upheaval and humiliations suffered after the Soviet collapse.
"Most importantly, the siloviki did not take part in Boris Yeltsin's government, and look what happened — it was awful for the country," said Sergei Markov, director of the Institute of Political Research think tank. "Now the siloviki are playing a role, and it is being welcomed because people want more order, meaning rule of law. They want less anarchy, they want the country to maintain its sovereignty, less corruption."
Analysts are divided over how much influence the siloviki have. Boris Makarenko, a top political researcher for the Center for Political Technologies, an independent think tank, said he doubts that these government newcomers operate as "a unified political group."
"Of course, there has been a greater influx of people with backgrounds in the army and security services, but I suspect the main impact is a less open, more bureaucratic and more conservative government," he said.
The shift to a more militarized government became inevitable, experts said, after the main security agencies were broken apart into nearly 20 different bodies with the Soviet Union's collapse, all requiring representatives in government. Putin took the process further.
"He wanted to consolidate his power, so he leaned on those he knew from the special services," Kryshtanovskaya said. "They, in turn, brought their friends and it spread."
According to her analysis, nearly 60 percent of the people closest to the president and in the powerful Security Council come from security or military backgrounds. Some 35 percent of the deputy ministers appointed between 2000 and 2003 were siloviki. The Justice Ministry had four, while Trade Minister German Gref, a favorite with liberals, had three.
And when Putin divided the nation into seven regional districts in a move to rein in unruly governors, siloviki were named to head five of them.
Putin's decision Monday to name the little known Fradkov as prime minister raised questions about where he fit in. The Russian media and political observers pointed to the missing year between Fradkov's 1972 graduation from a machine-building school and his plush foreign assignment at the Soviet Embassy in India. It hinted, they said, of a secret stint of KGB training. The popular daily Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper declared him "a secret silovik."
But Fradkov, a former chief of the tax police, also has liberal economic credentials, and by choosing him Putin rejected more obvious siloviki candidates.
"Putin is certainly obliged to the siloviki but, he doesn't want to stand too dependent on them," said analyst Masha Lipman of the Carnegie Endowment, suggesting that Fradkov's selection may be an attempt by Putin to retain independence as he enters his expected second term.
Kryshtanovskaya said "Putin was probably surprised" by her analysis of how his presidency had transformed the political elite. "I'm sure he had never stopped to count just how big the numbers of siloviki were," she said.