Troops prepare to be prison guards

WASHINGTON -- About 1,500 soldiers are heading to the U.S. Navy base in Cuba to prepare for the arrival of al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners. The biggest prize -- Osama bin Laden -- remains uncaptured, though there's a growing belief he has gone to Pakistan, two U.S. senators said Sunday.

Afghanistan's interim leader promised Sunday that fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar will be tracked down, even as reports said the one-eyed cleric may have eluded capture and fled to another province.

Meanwhile, American officials said the highest-ranking Taliban official in U.S. custody -- former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef -- has been moved to an American warship.

About 1,000 troops -- many of them military police -- from bases all over the United States have received orders to go to the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the prisoners will be held under maximum security, said Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman. Another 500 U.S. troops will go to the base in the coming weeks.

Some of the troops are being sent to transport the prisoners from Asia to the island, officials said.

Others will quickly prepare a section of the base to hold an initial group of fewer than 100 prisoners, though up to 2,000 prisoners eventually may be housed there, Davis said. Gen. Tommy Franks, the head of the military campaign in Afghanistan, said Friday that some prisoners are to arrive within 10 days.

The U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo predates the communist revolution on the island nation. It is well-defended and would offer few avenues of escape. Fidel Castro's government says the base should have been closed and returned to Cuban control decades ago.

More than 300 suspected Taliban or al-Qaida members were in U.S. custody this weekend, military officials have said. Soldiers were guarding 275 prisoners at the base in Kandahar, 21 at Bagram air base north of Kabul, and one in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. Another nine prisoners, including American Taliban John Walker Lindh, are being held on the USS Bataan in the Arabian Sea. Afghan and Pakistani authorities are holding thousands more prisoners captured during the fighting.

But the top targets, al-Qaida terrorist chief bin Laden and Taliban leader Omar, continue to elude the coalition hunt.

Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., who is traveling with other senators in the region, said Sunday that Uzbekistan's military intelligence service believes bin Laden has crossed the border into Pakistan. Uzbekistan, like Pakistan, borders Afghanistan and has been a U.S. ally in the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaida.

"I fully expect the Pakistanis will do everything they can to help us locate bin Laden," Edwards told Fox News Sunday.

Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said bin Laden and other top officials have probably escaped Afghanistan, but no one is certain.

"Increasingly as our efforts to get them in Afghanistan have been futile, there is a greater sense that they have, in fact, escaped and are probably in one of those tribal territories just over the border into Pakistan," Graham said from Miami on ABC's This Week.

Bin Laden was thought to be in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan, but he has not turned up in searches by U.S. and anti-Taliban forces there. Omar was most recently thought to be near Baghran, northwest of Kandahar, but Afghan officials now say they believe he escaped.

In Cuba, the prisoners will be held in "maximum security" conditions, the Pentagon said, and will be treated in accordance with international standards for military prisoners and have access to Red Cross and other nongovernmental organization personnel.

The military is planning tight security in light of the rioting by al-Qaida prisoners at Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, that left hundreds dead, including CIA officer Johnny "Mike" Spann, Davis said.

No decision has been made whether to hold military tribunals for some of the prisoners at the Navy base, he said.

Military personnel are being sent from Fort Hood, Texas, Fort Campbell, Ky., Camp Lejeune, N.C., and Norfolk Naval Station, Va., among other bases, Davis said. The prison operation will be commanded by Marine Brig. Gen. Michael R. Lehnert from Camp Lejeune.

Also Sunday:

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported Sunday that U.S. forces and their Afghan allies, backed by airstrikes, were carrying out operations in the Spinghar mountain range of eastern Afghanistan near Jalalabad, where al-Qaida holdouts were suspected to be hiding. It said 40 were arrested and handed over to the Americans.

The United States hopes a pair of high-profile prisoners will provide valuable intelligence about bin Laden's al-Qaida network, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, and the radical Taliban movement that gave it a base of operations.

Marine Lt. James Jarvis said Zaeef, the former ambassador, was in custody aboard a ship in the Arabian Sea.

Also, Ibn Al-Shayk al-Libi, who ran al-Qaida terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, was transferred Saturday from anti-Taliban forces to U.S. authorities at Kandahar airport, controlled by the U.S. Marines.

Troops from Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands all were scheduled to arrive in Afghanistan over the next several days to take part in peacekeeping and other operations. The largest single contingent will be France's 130 soldiers.

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