Monday, September 25 2006 12:53 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: Former US president Bill Clinton defended his efforts to hunt down Osama bin Laden, in reaction to criticism that he did too little against the leader of the Al Qaeda terrorist network. In an interview on US broadcaster Fox News Sunday, Clinton said that his administration worked hard to go after bin Laden. He said that he regretted that those efforts before 2001 did not succeed. Clinton left office in January 2001, and Bin Laden's Al Qaeda organisation orchestrated terrorist strikes against New York and Washington on Sep 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people. In a contentious interview, Clinton flashed visible anger at questions about his administration's anti-terrorism efforts posed by Fox News interviewer Chris Wallace. The cable outlet is widely viewed as more conservative than other US television networks. "What did I do?" Clinton asked in response to questions about his administration's military withdrawal from Somalia and response to Al Qaeda-linked bombings against US embassies in Africa and a US Navy ship off Yemen. "I worked hard to try to kill (bin Laden). I authorised a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since. And if I were still president, we'd have more than 20,000 troops there (in Afghanistan) trying to kill him," he said. Noting military deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, where more than 140,000 US troops remain, Clinton said that the government of his successor, US President George W. Bush, "thinks Afghanistan is only one-seventh as important as Iraq". Clinton told Wallace, "You've got that little smirk on your face and you think you're so clever. But I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get bin Laden. I regret it. But I did try. And I did everything I thought I responsibly could." Clinton blamed a 'serious disinformation campaign' for creating a perception that his administration was not active against Al Qaeda and bin Laden.