With key improvements in the security situation in Iraq during 2007, al Qaeda - and particularly its central leadership based in border regions of Pakistan - continues to pose the most significant threats to the United States, both at home and abroad, according to the director of national intelligence (DNI), ret. Adm. J. Michael McConnell.

And while the group has suffered major setbacks, particularly in Iraq, during the past year, it has successfully maintained its unity and is improving its ability to attack the US itself, in part by identifying, training and positioning westerners capable of carrying out such an attack, according to McConnell, who presented the intelligence community’s “annual threat assessment” before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“While increased security measures at home and abroad have caused al Qaeda to view the West, especially the US, as a harder target,” he told lawmakers, “we have seen an influx of new Western recruits into the tribal areas (in Pakistan) since mid-2006.”

Al Qaeda and its affiliates, among the most active and dangerous of which is the Al Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), remain the most significant threat. McConnell’s 45-page written testimony also expressed concerns about global energy security, including the possibility of “a major oil supply disruption” and its impact on the global economy; and the increased risk of social and political instability in developing countries resulting from the “double impact of high energy and food prices”.

The increased cost of both fuel and food, according to McConnell has already “outstripped global aid budgets and adversely impacted the ability of donor countries and organisations to provide food aid,” he noted, adding that recent public protests from Mexico to Morocco could portend broader disruptions.

McConnell, who appeared with the directors of Washington’s most important intelligence agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), also said the intelligence community was worried that major oil exporters, both OPEC and non-OPEC members, including Venezuela and Russia, will use their “windfall profits” to pursue political goals harmful to US interests.

McConnell reiterated the main finding of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) from last July that al Qaeda has “regenerated its core operational capabilities needed to conduct attacks in the Homeland”, primarily through its retention of a safe haven in Pakistan’s border areas which serve as a “staging area” for attacks in support of the Taliban in Afghanistan “as well as a location for training new terrorist operatives, for attacks in Pakistan, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the United States.” In Pakistan, a growing concern of US policymakers, McConnell warned that “radical elements have the potential to undermine the country’s cohesiveness and thatassassination of former Prime Minister Bhutto could embolden Pashtun militants, many of whom are linked to the Taliban. — IPS