The defeat of the Taliban government is one major objective accomplished so far by the United States and its coalition partners, but "[t]he war in Afghanistan is not won," says Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

Wolfowitz told journalists at a December 10 Pentagon news briefing that many Taliban leaders are unaccounted for, and many al-Qaida leaders and fighters remain at large.

He said the reports the Pentagon gets tend to place Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora area. But he emphasized the fragmentary nature of those reports, and the fact that they are not eyewitness sightings.

Osama bin Laden, Wolfowitz said, has seen his ability to communicate with his network outside Afghanistan "substantially degraded," and his authority over people who might be inclined to listen to him has been "substantially reduced" by U.S. and coalition efforts.

This does not mean that the al-Qaida terrorist network has been neutralized, Wolfowitz said, because it operates in 60 countries and must be dismantled entirely. "But I think [bin Laden's] ability, personally, to execute things has got to be reduced significantly," he said.

Wolfowitz also reported that "at least one, and I think two or three important Taliban leaders" -- Mullah Omar not among them -- have been captured "over the last few days." They were not captured by U.S. forces, he said.

Discussing Tora Bora, Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem said a 15,000-pound "daisy cutter" bomb was used on a cave complex there for its psychological effect, for its blast effect in causing cave openings to collapse, and because of reports that substantial al-Qaida forces and possibly even senior al-Qaida leadership might be located inside the complex. "[T]hat cave complex should no longer be usable for anybody to get in or out of," Stufflebeem said.

Whether bin Laden himself had been in that targeted cave Stufflebeem could not say. "It's still a hot area, ... and so with the fighting that's been going on, it's been difficult to get into that area to confirm exactly what happened on the ground," he said.

Wolfowitz noted that he had seen the recently-obtained videotape of bin Laden discussing the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and that he considered it disgusting.

"That people would take delight in having killed innocent people is horrible," Wolfowitz said.

Concerning the situation in Kandahar, Stufflebeem said the weekend passed quietly but with some tensions. He also said the coalition has "good indicators" that Mullah Omar has not left the Kandahar area, though he may no longer be inside the city.

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