Gen. Petraeus says Al Qaeda may be moving from Iraq to Pakistan to fight in Afghanistan.
CBS: Senior leaders of al-Qaida may be diverting fighters from the war in Iraq to the Afghan frontier area, the top American commander in Iraq told The Associated Press on Saturday.
Gen. David Petraeus also said al-Qaida may be reconsidering Iraq as its highest priority war front.
"There is some intelligence that has picked this up," he said in the interview in his office at the U.S. Embassy along the Tigris River. "It's not solid gold intelligence," he added, stressing that the reliability of the information has not been confirmed.
Nonetheless, he cited the signs as part of a broadly positive review of conditions in Iraq, where al-Qaida fighters have been driven almost entirely from Baghdad and pummeled in other urban areas.
Petraeus said the information was based on human intelligence, meaning informants.
"There are unsubstantiated rumors and reflections that perhaps some foreign fighters originally intended for Iraq may have gone to the FATA," he said, referring to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, where militants have a secure staging ground for movements into neighboring Afghanistan.
