Blair hails success of Afghan War

US warplanes renewed strikes against suspected terrorist hide-outs in eastern Afghanistan, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair said today that the war against the Taliban and al-Qaida had succeeded beyond anyone’s dreams.

But leading US senators said suspicion was increasing that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden had fled to Pakistan, and Mr Blair acknowledged that victory will not be complete until bin Laden and ousted Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar are captured.

Mr Blair, the most high-profile ally of US President George Bush in the war, was on a visit to Islamabad, the Pakistan capital, that has taken on dimensions of shuttle diplomacy to ease tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, which the US led coalition fears could disrupt the war in Afghanistan.

The premier, who was meeting President General Pervez Musharraf, told a news conference that the military campaign launched after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington ‘‘had been very substantially successful’’.

‘‘We have effectively shut down the al-Qaida terrorist network in Afghanistan,’’ Mr Blair said.

Camps where thousands of men were training to spread death and mayhem around the world ‘‘are now shut down. Those people are no longer being trained in terror. Many of those people have been captured or killed,’’ her said.

He said representatives of Afghan women he met before his news conference were "filled with joy" over the fall of the Taliban, the radical Islamic militia who barred women from education and the work force and beat them if they appeared in public without being covered head to toe.

Mr Blair described the Taliban as ‘‘the most brutal, repressive regime in the world’’ and said that criticism of the international community focused not on whether it was right to intervene, but whether it should have been done sooner.

The international community needs to commit long-term to rebuilding Afghanistan and not repeat the mistake made after the Soviet occupation ended in the 1980s, when indifference let the war-ravaged country become a failed state, exporting terror and drugs, Mr Blair said.