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March 04, 2007 at 9:50:4 PST
WASHINGTON (AP) -
Pakistan must do more to stem al-Qaida in its ungoverned territories amid growing signs operatives plan a spring offensive against allied forces in Afghanistan, lawmakers on the intelligence committees said Sunday.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., also said the U.S. must work to ensure that North Korea sticks to its promise to limit its nuclear program. They complained that Congress still lacks meaningful intelligence about the world's hot spots.
"We still don't have the intelligence community overall to give us, as policymakers, the information that we need to make good decisions in North Korea, Iran and other places," said Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House intelligence committee. "We've been disappointed with the stand-up from the leadership in the intelligence community."
In response, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell's spokesman said that intelligence has been strengthened by changes intended to identify gaps in intelligence and ensure analysts have the information they need. Chad Kolton said one of McConnell's priorities "is to build on those reforms by improving penetration of our hardest intelligence targets."
Feinstein, the No. 2 Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, criticized what she called half-measures by Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, at a critical moment for the United States and its allies. She said "pinpoint attacks" are needed against al-Qaida before a possible spring offensive.
"The Pakistanis either have to let us go in or go in themselves when they have intelligence," she said. "There's no question that there's going to be a spring offensive in Afghanistan, that they're trying to reach out, that training is going on, recruitment is going on."
Last week, McConnell told Congress that the U.S. is concerned that al-Qaida's top two leaders - Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri - may be hiding in the rugged frontiers of northwestern Pakistan and are attempting to establish an operational base.
McConnell's push for action along the Afghan-Pakistani border came after Vice President Dick Cheney met earlier in the week with Musharraf.
Hoekstra agreed that the Pakistan region was a growing threat but cautioned that a balancing act was required to ensure that Musharraf's government stays in power. Musharraf faces elections in September.
"We need stability in the regime. We need this regime to survive," he said. "The Pakistanis have been doing a number of things to help us go after al-Qaida."
On Iran, Feinstein said similar regional discussions are needed to stem that country's nuclear program. She said she believes the U.S. could exploit a leadership split in Iran's government to work out some agreement.
Hoekstra called Iran a very troubling area overall given its activities in Iraq and their relationships with Hamas and Hezbollah.
"This is not an ally in the war against militant radicalism. They're not an ally in getting us to be successful in Iraq," he said. "We need to focus on them and I think some of the changes and some of the steps that are being taken by the administration are very positive."
As for North Korea, Feinstein praised the country's initial steps to comply with the Feb. 13 agreement on its nuclear program. She stressed the need for cooperation from neighboring Asian countries.
"I don't think you can underestimate the value of China in keeping the North Koreans on track now in seeing that this plutonium-based program is disassembled and that North Korea is brought into the mainstream," Feinstein said.
Like Hoekstra, Feinstein was highly critical of U.S. intelligence efforts aimed at understanding North Korea, specifically the lack of information on how many nuclear devices North Korea has assembled and where that work is happening.
"North Korea is a long way from us, and the intelligence infrastructure is not that good, to be very candid with you," she said.
In the past week, considerable attention has focused on whether U.S. intelligence analysts have softened their assessments on whether North Korea is pursuing a uranium enrichment program. That effort would be happening alongside the North's plutonium program, which resulted in a successful test of a nuclear device last year.
But McConnell's office pushed back on the notion that spy agencies' views had changed.
In a statement Sunday, the director's mission manager for North Korea, Joseph DeTrani, said there has been "considerable misinterpretation" of the spy agencies assessments on the uranium program.
He said U.S. intelligence had strong information in 2002 that allowed analysts to make a judgment with high confidence that North Korea was acquiring a uranium enrichment capability. That view has not changed.
At the time, the CIA found that North Korea secretly had purchased centrifuges and other equipment needed to construct a large-scale enrichment facility. The U.S. confronted North Korea with that information.
Since then, DeTrani said, "all intelligence community agencies have at least moderate confidence that North Korea's past efforts to acquire a uranium enrichment capability continue today."
Feinstein and Hoekstra appeared on "Fox News Sunday."
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Associated Press writer Katherine Shrader contributed to this report.
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"Send us soldiers: NATO soldiers," said a Pakistani Pashtun tribal leader, who said the ISI is arming and supporting the Taliban. The Afghan Army fired at a Pakistani military post in Mohmand agency, which triggered skirmishes.