Leaders of al-Qaeda and the Taliban have held a series of meetings in Pakistan to discuss how to disrupt Afghanistan's upcoming elections, the US military said Monday. 

"Relatively high-ranking" members of both groups as well as rebel Afghan faction Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin have held several meetings on how to derail the October 9 vote, spokesman Major Scott Nelson said.

Citing intelligence reports, Nelson said the meetings were marked by growing alarm at intensifying efforts on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border to root out their activities.

Nelson said the participants in the meetings were "relatively high-ranking," but would not elaborate or specify where they took place.

He said it was "certainly" possible that Osama bin Laden and other leaders of al-Qaeda were in the rugged border region.

Major General Eric Olson, the operational commander of the US-led force in Afghanistan, said this month that he had no fix on where bin Laden or his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, were located.

But he said he believed the al-Qaeda leaders were still pulling some of the strings in the stubborn Afghan insurgency.

Olson cited a car bombing which killed about 10 people, including three Americans, at the office of a US security company in the Afghan capital last month.

Election workers have also been targeted, with 10 killed so far in a string of bombings and shootings, but the violence has failed to prevent millions of Afghans from registering to vote.

Meanwhile, an Afghan vice president survived an assassination attempt yesterday in the north.

Nematuallah Shahrani was traveling in convoy with other members of President Hamid Karzai's cabinet when a remote-controlled device was detonated near his car in the province of Kunduz, said Governor Mohammad Omar Khan.

"One driver of one of the cars was slightly hurt in this incident," Khan said.

(China Daily September 21, 2004)