Iraq Not Main Anti-terror Front: CIA

Hayden admitted that Al-Qaeda organization, which claims the 9/11 attacks in the US, remains a resilient threat.

"Today, the flow of money, weapons and foreign fighters into Iraq is greatly diminished," CIA director Michael Hayden told the Atlantic Council think-tank on Thursday.

"Al-Qaeda senior leaders no longer point to it (Iraq) as the central battlefield."

For years, the Bush administration said that Iraq was a central front in Washington's so-called war on terror.

Without a UN authorization, the US invaded Iraq on claims of possessing weapons of mass destruction and links to Al-Qaeda both proved wrong.

Since then, the country has plunged into an abyss of violence, claiming the lives of thousands, and according to some estimates hundreds of thousands, of civilians.

Hayden, appointed in May 2006 by Bush, said Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is deeply isolated and has been forced to devote much of his energy to won security.

"He is putting a lot of energy into his own survival, a lot of energy into his own security," he said.

"In fact, he appears to be largely isolated from the day-to-day operations of the organization he nominally heads."

The CIA chief suggested that bin Laden was hiding somewhere in the remote Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

Hayden described "the sheer challenge of surveying every square mile of that inhospitable and dangerous region," and said "part of the explanation for his survival lies in the fact that he has worked to avoid detection."

During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama vowed to hunt down bin Laden, accusing Bush of diverting resources from the war in Afghanistan and the hunt for bin Laden to fight what he has called an unnecessary war in Iraq.

Resilient Al-Qaeda

The CIA chief admitted that Al-Qaeda organization, which claims the 9/11 attacks in the US, remains a resilient threat.

"If there is a major strike on [the US], it will bear the fingerprints of al-Qaeda," he said.

Hayden, who may soon be stepping down as CIA chief amid media speculation that president-elect Barack Obama may choose to replace him National Intelligence director Mike McConnell, said Al-Qaeda has regrouping in Pakistan's tribal areas.

"Let me be very clear: Today, virtually every major terrorist threat that my agency is aware of has threads back to the tribal areas.

"Whether it's command and control, training, direction, money, capabilities, there is a connection to the FATA (Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas)".

He also said Pashtun separatists in Afghanistan had forged an "operational alliance" with Al-Qaeda fighters across the border in Pakistan, which became clear a year ago and was a "troubling" development.

Hayden believes that the killing or capturing of bin Laden would deal a severe blow to Al-Qaeda organization.

"Because of his iconic stature, his death or capture clearly would have a significant impact on the confidence of his followers, both core Al-Qaeda and these unaffiliated extremists ... throughout the world."