US has had direct strike option against Qaeda for five years, says Senator Biden

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Democratic candidate for president, Joseph Biden is latest to join a growing chorus of American politicians who favour a direct attack on Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan.

Boston, Aug.16 : The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Democratic candidate for president, Joseph Biden is latest to join a growing chorus of American politicians who favour a direct attack on Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan.

Interviewed here by the Boston Sun, after a bookstore appearance to promote his new memoir, "Promises to Keep," Biden said Democrat Senators Obama, Dodd and Clinton have been missing the point on Pakistan and al Qaeda.

He claims that Washington has consistently retained the option of carrying out a direct strike on al Qaeda, if it possesses credible intelligence to support it.

"All three of them seemed to be arguing about something that they didn't know already existed. It is the policy of the United States of America. It has been the policy for the last five years, if there's actionable intelligence relating to bin Laden or Al Qaeda, that we would move, assuming we're able to move, against him," Biden said.

Commenting on Obama's proposal to tie American aid to Pakistan to progress in fighting Al Qaeda, he says the Biden-Lantos Amendment covers this option adequately.

"It exists now, so the thing that startled me was the fact that here these three people are arguing about whether we should go in or not go in or how to go in, the first thing that surprised me is it took so long for them to focus on Pakistan. I've been talking about Pakistan and this since I went into Afghanistan as the first American in there since the Taliban came down in 2001," Biden, a presidential candidate, says.

ANI