Al-Qaida Could Be Beaten in a Few Years, Says Head of Fbi

The head of the FBI predicted yesterday that al-Qaida could be defeated within a few years, far more quickly than senior counter terrorism officials and government ministers in Britain suggest. "I think we'll see victory on my watch," Robert Mueller said on a visit to London.

Mueller, 63, also sharply attacked the British ban on phone tap evidence in terrorist trials, describing it as "untenable". He said: "Some of the best evidence you get are the words coming out of the mouths of those who are being prosecuted."

Mueller, who was appointed FBI director a few days before the September 11 2001 attacks on the US, was answering questions after delivering a speech on global terrorism at Chatham House, the prominent British foreign affairs think tank.

British security and intelligence chiefs and government ministers have warned that the fight against Islamist-inspired terrorism will last as long as a generation. Mueller's prediction that al-Qaida could be defeated before he retires came after an upbeat speech in which he praised close cooperation between US and British counter terrorist agencies. "Our information-sharing is getting faster, easier, and more detailed every day," he said. "This collaboration is the future of counter terrorism."

Mueller declined to comment directly on the 42-day pre-charge detention the British government is pressing for despite strong parliamentary opposition. However, after suggesting US law enforcement agencies had no problem with the two-day limit imposed by American courts, he said "incentives" had to be used. "There is not a terrorist group that we have taken down since September 11 in which one or more of them have not decided to cooperate. And from that cooperation comes a vast pool of intelligence," he said.

Plea bargaining, he said, was crucial. Authorities here have backed away from formal plea-bargaining procedures. Describing the use of evidence obtained by telephone intercepts as "tremendously beneficial", Mueller said waiting for the prosecution to get other intelligence was untenable. Under proposals by a Privy Council review committee in February, security and intelligence agencies and police would be allowed to veto use in trials of evidence gathered by phone taps.

Mueller's audience included Jonathan Evans, head of MI5, which, like GCHQ, is concerned that allowing phone tap evidence in court would place an unacceptable burden on the agencies and reveal sophisticated techniques.

Mueller said earlier in his prepared speech that al-Qaida presented a three-tiered threat. First there was the top tier, the core, of the organization in the ungoverned sanctuaries of Pakistan's frontier provinces. Second were small, largely self-directed al-Qaida "franchises" such as the July 7 London bombers. Third were self-radicalizing, self-financing, self-executing "homegrown extremists". They included those behind an attempt to blow up pipelines at JFK airport in New York last year.