US plans hit squads to target al-Qa'ida worldwide

The United States is considering a radical plan to use elite military units to track and kill al-Qa'ida leaders around the world, a policy that would break with tradition and raise major questions of US compliance with international law.

The plan, disclosed by three senior government officials and reported in The New York Times yesterday, was the latest in a flurry of high-level leaks of classified information and suggested again that members of the Bush administration are deeply divided over the direction of the so-called "war on terrorism" and are using the media to sabotage efforts by planners and policy-makers to maintain secrecy.

The sources say the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, wants to involve special operations forces in covert operations to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants, no matter where they might be. Traditionally, covert operations of this kind have been carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency, something that has generated enormous controversy, even without the participation of the military.

But Mr Rumsfeld is reported to be dissatisfied with the speed with which the CIA can move after it receives intelligence about an al-Qa'ida operative and believes the military could act more swiftly and more efficiently.

The New York Times says the Pentagon thinks it can overcome the legal obstacles to such a policy by arguing that assassinations are part of "preparation of the battlefield" in the open-ended war on terror. The notion of endless war is highly controversial, even within the Administration, and it is not clear whether the definition can pass muster with Congress, with international law or with public opinion.

Since the 11 September attacks, several branches of the Administration have announced policies clearly aimed at circumventing traditional constitutional or legal obstacles, saying the moves are justified by the threat of renewed assault on US territory. The CIA, for example, has tried to overturn a long-standing ban on assassinations in its own covert operations, an effort that has won presidential approval but is yet to be formalised.

One attraction of the military assassination option might be that it gets around the CIA's legal difficulties. Nobody has greater legal leeway to kill people than the military during wartime. One senior Pentagon adviser told The New York Times: "We're at war with al-Qa'ida. If we find an enemy combatant, we should be able to use military forces to take military action against them."

The Bush administration has come under increasing attack for its failure to define the terms of its war, or to say at what point it might be over. Clearly, there is frustration that last winter's assault on the Taliban and al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan failed to net the capture or death of Mr bin Laden and his lieutenants. Some security briefings circulating in Washington suggest al-Qa'ida is now more dangerous than it was before the war in Afghanistan, not less.

This week's Newsweek magazine claims there is credible evidence that the senior al-Qa'ida members hiding in the Tora Bora mountains last December, including Mr bin Laden, escaped to Pakistan, either because US planes bombed the wrong escape route or because a nominally pro-American local warlord was paid to allow them to go.