Arrest called jolt to Qaeda

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan said yesterday it will consider extraditing a senior Al Qaeda suspect only after its own interrogation of the man is complete, while top government officials said the arrest showed Osama bin Laden's terror network was crumbling.

A top Pakistani security official said that the information that Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was providing to his interrogators has already been shared with American intelligence.

Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayyat said the arrest Sunday in Gujrat was a ''great blow to the Al Qaeda" network of bin Laden.

Ghailani has been indicted in the Southern District of New York for his alleged role in the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Meanwhile, US intelligence officials said another detainee, a senior Al Qaeda leader captured in Pakistan months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, falsely told interrogators that Iraq had trained Al Qaeda operatives in chemical and biological weapons, according to a report in today's New York Times. Officials said Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi recanted the claims sometime last year, after US officials had cited them as a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the Times reported.