By Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press, 12/20/01

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon may dispatch Marines to eastern Afghanistan's mountainous Tora Bora region to help hunt for clues to the whereabouts of fugitive terrorist Osama bin Laden, a defense official said Thursday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, stressed that no decision had been made on whether and in what numbers Marines would be sent. A few dozen U.S. special operations forces already are in the Tora Bora area assisting Afghan tribal forces who are searching caves abandoned in recent days by al-Qaida fighters. An unknown number of those fighters remain at large.

Another official said other options being considered included sending Army troops to the area, such as soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division who are deployed in northern Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.

Some believe bin Laden may still be in the Tora Bora area, while others think he fled into neighboring Pakistan.

The New York Times, which first reported that U.S. officials are considering sending Marines to Tora Bora, said in Thursday's editions that several hundred might go. It also reported that one of their tasks could be to dig into caves sealed shut by American bombing.

American forces, meanwhile, have taken custody of three more prisoners believed to be high-level Taliban or al-Qaida figures, and were working Thursday to hunt down others.

The three captives were moved to the Navy's USS Peleliu in the Arabian Sea, bringing to 23 the number of fighters or leaders from the Afghan war now in U.S. hands, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said.

Asked if they were senior figures, Clarke said officials don't have "hard descriptions of who they are." Pentagon officials have said previously that prisoners have been trying to conceal their identities during interrogations aimed at determining if they might have useful intelligence or should be held for punishment.

"We think they are of enough interest that we want to talk to them, we want to have control of them," Clarke said of the three men added to five already being held on the U.S. warship off the coast of Pakistan.

A senior defense official said on condition of anonymity that the three are believed to be important figures wanted by the U.S. government.

The prisoners were transferred to the Peleliu from a detention center near Mazar-e-Sharif, the first city to fall to anti-Taliban fighters in the war.

Two senior Taliban officials already were on the helicopter carrier, defense officials said Wednesday on condition of anonymity. Completing the eight now on the ship are an American who joined Taliban fighters, an Australian associated with the Taliban and a Saudi Arabian member of a group accused of having terrorist ties.

The Taliban militia ruled Afghanistan for five years until its collapse this month.

The Marines also are holding 15 prisoners at a newly built jail at the Kandahar airport in southern Afghanistan.

Pakistan has detained a "few hundred" more who have fled from Afghanistan's Tora Bora region this week, Clarke said. U.S.-backed anti-Taliban militias have thousands.

U.S. officials are interrogating prisoners, scrutinizing surveillance photos and asking for help from friendly forces in trying to track down top Taliban and al-Qaida leaders.

Interrogations of the scores of Osama bin Laden loyalists captured in Pakistan should yield a "treasure trove" of leads for the U.S. campaign to hunt down the missing terrorist leader and eradicate his al-Qaida network, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday.

"If they're al-Qaida ... you can be darned certain we're going to try to get our hands on them," Rumsfeld said.

He said U.S. forces are helping anti-Taliban Afghans clear caves "one by one" in the Tora Bora area, the last bastion of the al-Qaida before the group largely abandoned the area Monday. He said the work is slow and difficult, complicated by bad weather and darkness.

U.S. experts also will be poring over photos, videos and other surveillance information gathered by satellites, planes and helicopters over Afghanistan and Pakistan. Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news conference that the United States has airborne reconnaissance watching the area, but did not elaborate.

U.S. helicopters have been flying over the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border at night, likely using night-vision equipment to try to spot people, pack animals and vehicles in the darkness.

Attack jets such as F/A-18s also have night-vision equipment and can immediately fire on enemy troops and positions. Even the unmanned Predator reconnaissance drones can be fitted with anti-tank Hellfire missiles.

Rumsfeld said it was a mistake to declare al-Qaida defeated.

"They certainly aren't functioning well," he said. "They're running, and they're hiding, and they're having difficulty communicating with each other, but a large number of them seem to behave in a fanatical way, and I suspect that we'll hear more of them."

------

EDITOR'S NOTE -- Associated Press writer Matt Kelley contributed to this report.