NATO denies al Qaeda reviving in Afghanistan

Wall Street Journal had reported al Qaeda militants were returning and setting up bases for the first time in years

KABUL: The NATO-led force in Afghanistan on Thursday denied a report that al Qaeda was staging a comeback in Afghanistan, saying the militants remained under pressure in the country's east.

Al Qaeda's "actions do not equate to a return in force, and it is thus a stretch to equate it to a large comeback," Lieutenant Colonel John Dorrian, spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said in a statement.

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Arab fighters for al Qaeda had moved back into eastern provinces along the Pakistani border to take advantage of a gradual withdrawal of US forces from the area.

An air strike by US fighter jets in September against an al Qaeda training camp in the east illustrated the extremist network's resurgence, wrote the Journal, citing unnamed US, Afghan and Taliban sources.

"It is an overstatement to say that al Qaeda has taken hold in Afghanistan," Dorrian said.

"Certainly, as they have in the past, AQ (al Qaeda) continues to look for options to set up camps in which to train and base. However, AQ is also aware that ISAF closely monitors the region and is constantly looking for such camps," he said.

The coalition force over the past six months had killed al Qaeda's number three leader in Afghanistan and killed or captured other key figures in the east, he added.

US and NATO officials have previously portrayed al Qaeda as mostly a spent force in Afghanistan with only a couple dozen fighters on the ground at most.