New York: Two years after the September 11 terrorist strikes, the United States is "not even close" to pinpointing Osama bin Laden's whereabouts and may never find him, intelligence sources say.

A US Defence Department official involved in the search for Laden says it may not be possible to ever kill or capture him. "We're going to have to be very lucky to get him," the official was quoted as saying in the latest issue of 'Newsweek' magazine.

Recent reports place Laden in remote Afghan and Pakistani border provinces such as Kunar and Waziristan. Unable to infiltrate his network, US officials note he has gone silent, having long since dropped the use of satellite phones or even landlines.

Laden is surrounded by "people who are extremely loyal to him," says one US official. "Very, very few people know his whereabouts and those who do would not be inclined to discuss it."

It has been many months since President George W Bush declared he wanted Laden "dead or alive", but with America distracted in Iraq and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf wary of stirring up an Islamist backlash, there is no large-scale military force currently pursuing the chief culprit in the 9/11 attacks, the magazine says quoting American officials.

Military officials now openly worry about whether they will have enough troops for the tasks they have in Afghanistan and Iraq, given declining re-enlistments by frustrated Reservists and National Guardsmen.

"The point is, why would we open that new front? It wasn't related directly to the war on terror," says retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, the former Centcom commander who has long criticised the administration's switch from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein.

The US still has only about 9,000 troops in all of Central Asia, even as it struggles to fight off demands that it increase its presence in Iraq.

Some US military officials, 'Newsweek' says, trace the Taleban's gradual resurgence to the abrupt diversion of so many resources to Iraq, including Predator aerial vehicles, in a critical period beginning in 2002.

As an example, they point to the Arabic-speaking Fifth Special Forces Group – the teams that were mostly credited with winning the Afghan war – which were largely pulled out in February and March of 2002 to be soon redeployed in the Mid East.

They were replaced by other teams such as the Seventh Group, whose focus is Latin America.

The result: a loss of good intelligence. "The conventional Army came in and new teams…didn't have the same relations. Continuity is everything. The trust you develop with another guy by fighting alongside him is everything. We did it wrong," an official says.

PTI