By Ralph Dannheisser
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- Mounting tensions with India have not yet prompted Pakistan to divert troops from essential tasks along its Afghan border, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said December 27.

Asked at a regular Pentagon briefing about the impact of the Pakistani-Indian hostilities, Rumsfeld termed it "a difficult and tense situation, obviously" and reported that "the president and Secretary Powell and others have been working with both governments over the past days."

But as for any impact on patrols along the Afghan border, he said, Pakistan has "not yet moved forces" from the task "and that is very encouraging to us...(That) is clearly a deterrent to people trying to come across, trying to escape from Afghanistan."

The secretary observed that if tensions between India and Pakistan worsened, additional problems could present themselves for the U.S. war effort: "We could have problems with air overflights" as Pakistan restricted air space, and force protection for U.S. troops at bases in that country would have to be enhanced, he noted.

Rumsfeld used a question as to whether Osama bin Laden would be more difficult to apprehend if he managed to escape to Pakistan to express U.S. appreciation for Pakistani help in the fight against terrorism.

"We have found the Pakistani government to just be very cooperative in so many things that I have trouble believing it would be a problem at all," he said.

Asked to assess recent reports that bin Laden has, in fact, escaped to Pakistan, Rumsfeld deflected the question:

"We hear six, seven, eight, ten, twelve conflicting reports every day. I've stopped chasing them," he said. "We do know of certain knowledge that he is either in Afghanistan, or in some other country, or dead. And we know of certain knowledge that we don't know which of those happens to be the case."

Rumsfeld confirmed plans to hold some detainees captured in Afghanistan at the United States' Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba.

"We are making preparations to hold detainees there; we have made no plans to hold any kind of tribunal there," he told a questioner.

Asked why that site had been chosen, he characterized Guantanamo as "the least worst place we could have selected," observing, "it's disadvantages seem to be modest relative to the alternatives."

As to the timeframe for moving detainees there, he said Guantanamo facilities "wouldn't be ready for a number of weeks to handle the kinds of people that we would very likely place there."

Air Force General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who joined Rumsfeld at the briefing, reported that U.S. forces had taken custody only the previous day of another 20 detainees turned over by Pakistani authorities.

That brings the number of Taliban and al-Qaida personnel in U.S. custody to 45, of whom 37 are being held at Kandahar and the other eight on a naval vessel, he said.

Reporting on military action in Afghanistan the previous day, Myers said U.S. forces had destroyed a compound near Ghazni "with both heavy bombers and tactical aircraft, using both precision and non-precision weapons." He added, "We had reports that put some of the Taliban leadership in that facility."

Asked about allegations that civilians were killed in the attack, Myers responded, "We think the majority of folks in there would have been Taliban leadership."

He acknowledged "there may have been" some civilians at the site. But, he said, "this is a war against terrorism and unfortunately there will probably be some of those incidents."

In opening remarks at the briefing, Rumsfeld gave what amounted to a year-end summary of Defense Department achievements in 2001, and a projection of plans for the years ahead.

"As we prosecute today's war, we are also working to try to prepare our nation for the next war, by transforming the Department of Defense and our armed forces for the 21st century," he said.

He noted that, in the Quadrennial Defense Review, "we put aside the threat-based model of the past and adopted a capabilities-based approach, one that focuses less on who might threaten us or where, and more on how we might be threatened and what capabilities we will need to deter and defend against those threats."

The new approach abandons the concept of being prepared to fight two simultaneous major regional conflicts, he said, in favor of "a new emphasis on homeland security" and a focus on "the full range of asymmetrical threats."

He said the Bush administration has "refashioned the missile defense...from one that had been constrained by the ABM treaty to one that is broad-based and designed to test the widest range of promising technologies."

"With the nuclear posture review which will be released next week," Rumsfeld said, "we lay the groundwork for a new approach to strategic deterrence -- one that will combine deep reductions, truly deep reductions in offensive strategic forces, with deployment of missile defenses capable of protecting the U.S., our friends, allies and deployed forces from limited ballistic missile attacks."