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CNN Live Today

'Mountain Lion' Patrols to Continue

Aired April 08, 2002 - 13:12   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well the pentagon is sending up to 70 U.S. troops to Yemen to help that country train for counter terror activities. Washington is also reportedly nearing an agreement with Yemen that may soon allow U.S. warships to once again refuel at the port of Aden (ph). This comes 19 months after the bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 American sailors.

Joining us with a closer look at U.S. military affairs both here and abroad is CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr -- Barbara.

BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, there. Well in just over an hour, we expect our regular update here in the pressroom from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. And he's probably going to be asked questions on several matters. One of which is this new effort in Afghanistan known as Operation Mountain Lion.

Now Operation Mountain Lion is part of this ongoing effort you see here to conduct surveillance and recognizance (ph) missions throughout southern and eastern Afghanistan, the continuing hunt for pockets of Al Qaeda and Taliban. The patrols are said to be ongoing for the next several weeks. There will be a number of missions and a number of activities. They will continue to search caves, look for intelligence, all of that sort of thing. But what's really interesting is so far they are running into no large pockets of Al Qaeda. There have been no major encounters with the Al Qaeda, of course, since Operation Anaconda. So U.S. officials are wondering where they've all gone.

Some of the speculation, of course, they've melted back into the countryside or some of them may have escaped across the border into Pakistan. But we are led to believe that there will be upcoming military action against the smaller pockets of Al Qaeda that they are trying to locate.

And in other developments, the aircraft carrier, John Stenus (ph), will now be leaving the Afghanistan theater of operations in the next few weeks returning home on its regular schedule. The Pentagon deciding that it no longer needs to have two aircraft carriers in the region. It has more ground-based aircraft out in that region and the number of targets are decreasing at this point in the war so they want to get the aircraft carrier home. Get everybody back in to a regular rotation schedule looking ahead to end of the year if there's more military action possibly in Iraq -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: And Barbara what's the news from the Pentagon on the second American Taliban?

STARR: Right. Mr. Yasser Hamdi (ph) to be held in detention in Norfolk at the brig, at the Norfolk Naval Base. What's interesting there is the Pentagon says it's understanding is the Justice Department has no interest in prosecuting Mr. Hamdi so the question is now what to do about him. If he is an American citizen, the U.S. military is in the sort of unprecedented situation of possibly holding an American citizen in detention for an indefinite period of time. So many difficult questions in days ahead about what to about Yasser Hamdi -- Kyra.

STARR: All right. Barbara Starr live from the Pentagon, thank you.

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