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US 'believes' Zarqawi claim
29/05/2005 16:17 - (SA)
Washington - General Richard Myers, the outgoing chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sunday that the United States "tends to believe" a web site claim that Al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has been wounded.
"What we've seen is postings on their web site that, in fact, he's been injured," Myers said in an interview with Fox News Sunday.
"Because we follow these web sites, we tend to believe that that's probably true," he said. "We don't know more than that right now."
US military officials reacted cautiously to the initial claim on an Al-Qaeda web site that Zarqawi had been wounded but have given it more credence in recent days.
Asked whether the United States believed Zarqawi had been seriously wounded, Myers said: "I don't know seriously. We tend to believe what is said on the web site and that is that he's been injured. And we'll just have to wait and see."
Myers, who is to step down as head of the US armed forces in September, said that although Zarqawi was an "important target" even if he was killed or captured "the movement will continue."
"Al-Qaeda has a way of continuing to put people in those leadership positions," he said.
Myers said the United States and its Iraqi allies had made excellent progress in putting pressure on the insurgents in Iraq and "our strategy is working."
"We've been very, very successful," he said. We've rounded up 600 of (Zarqawi's) folks, some of his foot soldiers, some of his closest lieutenants.
"Clearly what we want to have happen in Iraq is to have Iraqi security forces take charge of their own security," he added. "And every day, they're more and more able to do that.
"We've had lots of combined operations where Iraqis lead and we assist," Myers said. "That number is getting larger."
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AFP
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