KABUL — Afghanistan's fragile interim government faced new challenges Sunday as factional rivalry in two provinces threatened further bloodshed, while a top U.S. senator said intelligence suggests that Osama bin Laden, the world's most wanted man, remains alive.
"We don't know where bin Laden is. The best intelligence is he is still alive, but where he is continues to be a question mark," Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat, said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Graham chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, which receives regular briefings on intelligence from President Bush's war on terrorism.
Speculation had mounted that bin Laden, whom U.S. officials blame for the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, might have been killed by a missile launched from an unmanned CIA aircraft. The missile hit what was believed to be a group of senior members of bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
But Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the intelligence committee's top Republican, said he too believed bin Laden was still alive.
"I believe he's alive. We don't know where he is," Shelby said on NBC.
"He's a survivor by nature, has been, and I'll believe he's alive until we have some kind forensic evidence to the contrary. I have a feeling he'll reappear," he added.
Meanwhile, the deposed governor of the eastern province of Paktia said on Sunday he would recapture the region by force from a rival tribal faction that took control of the provincial capital Gardez last week.
And in the eastern province of Khost, a powerful commander asked the interim government of Hamid Karzai to name another governor after first consulting with the local shura (council) of elders and warned that if this was not done violence would erupt as it had in Paktia last week, where more than 50 people died.
"The present governor is unacceptable to us because he was sent (by Kabul) without consulting the Khost shura," the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) quoted local commander Sardar Khan Khapaski as saying.
In Mazar-i-Sharif, leaders from northern Afghanistan's three main ethnic groups reaffirmed their commitment to a U.N.- backed security plan Sunday and gave armed men another three days to leave the area's main city.
Meanwhile, Afghan Interior Minister Yunus Qanuni said Sunday that authorities had found evidence linking two detained suspects to the shooting deaths of four foreign journalists, including two from Reuters, on a lonely stretch of road last year.
Qanuni declined to give details of the evidence but said investigators were trying to determine if more people were involved.
Afghan Defense Minister Mohammad Fahim arrived in Moscow, once Afghanistan's sworn enemy, on Sunday with a long shopping list of Russian military hardware for his country's nascent national army.
Fahim is the most senior member of the interim Afghan government to visit Moscow since the six-month administration took power in December.