ANALYSIS-US policy shown vulnerable to Qaeda strikes

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An al Qaeda role in the murder of Benazir Bhutto would show that the militant group can dramatically thwart U.S. foreign policy more than six years after President Bush set out to defeat it.

U.S. intelligence agencies worked Friday to verify a Pakistan Interior Ministry statement that intercepted communications linked al Qaeda to the assassination. Thursday's killing shattered Bush's hopes that Bhutto's return to Pakistan in October as an opposition leader would foster democracy and stability.

"Sometimes I think that bin Laden and Zawahri must shake their heads and say, 'It's all too easy"' said Michael Scheuer, a former CIA employee who led the hunt for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Ayman al-Zawahri, bin Laden's deputy, earlier this month denounced Bhutto as an instrument of U.S. policy.

Pakistan said militant Baitullah Mehsud was behind the killing and it called him an al Qaeda leader. A U.S. counterterrorism official described Mehsud, who had previously threatened Bhutto, as a tribal leader and "seasoned jihadist with strong links to al Qaeda, the Taliban and other terrorist organizations."

Some analysts remained skeptical, saying it served Musharraf's interests to focus attention on al Qaeda while his own government faced domestic suspicions of complicity.

"The Pakistanis are probably lying," said former U.S. counterterrorism official Richard Clarke.

But if true, al Qaeda's orchestration shows that it can launch significant strikes from the western Pakistan tribal areas where it regrouped after a U.S.-led invasion routed it from neighboring Afghanistan in 2001, analysts said.

Al Qaeda has "physical and psychological space to recruit, train terrorist operatives and plan attacks," the U.S. counterterrorism official said.

'VIRTUALLY IMPOTENT'?

When bin Laden issued a new video before this year's sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, then-White House homeland security adviser Fran Townsend dismissed him as "virtually impotent." However, a national intelligence estimate in July described al Qaeda's revived strength and command abilities, often working through regional groups.

Al Qaeda's goal is not so much to attack inside the United States but to drive it from the region, Scheuer said. Bhutto, as a supporter of U.S. policy with a nearly 20-year history of bad blood with bin Laden, was an inevitable target.

"It was not right to push her to her death," Scheuer said in characterizing support for her return by the United States and Britain. "What I really find in a way disgusting is that Mr. Bush's fingerprints, (British Prime Minister) Gordon Brown's fingerprints and the fingerprints of most of our presidential candidates are on Mrs. Bhutto's corpse."

Now, he said, "they have a hell of a mess," with options dwindling in Pakistan and no clear plan to counter resurgent pressure in Afghanistan from al Qaeda and its Taliban ally.

Taliban strength has doubled in the western Pakistan border areas in the past 12 to 18 months, said analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Bhutto's killing will only make it harder for the United States to persuade Musharraf to crack down in the border regions, he said.

"Anything that weakens Pakistan ... creates a vacuum that al Qaeda can exploit," Cordesman said. (Editing by Bill Trott)