WASHINGTON, Feb 25: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Sunday that there’re ‘political issues’ that hinder Pakistan’s fight against Al Qaeda but President Pervez Musharraf has been a ‘stalwart fighter’ in this war.

In an interview to ABC News, Ms Rice rejected the suggestion that Al Qaeda was staging a comeback but acknowledged that the terror network was trying to “regenerate some of its leadership”.

Asked if she agreed that President Musharraf was constrained in this fight against terrorism and did she worry about how much pressure he could bear, Ms Rice said: “I'm certainly aware that there are political issues in Pakistan. To not say that would be not to face the reality, but this has been a stalwart fighter, Pakistan's Musharraf, in this fight.”

Ms Rice recalled that Al Qaeda tried to kill President Musharraf a couple of times and added: “The Pakistani leadership knows that Al Qaeda would like nothing better than to destabilise Pakistan and to use Pakistan as a base, rather than Afghanistan, for its operations.”

Secretary Rice said that the US had had excellent cooperation with the Pakistanis on hunting down Al Qaeda, and in its efforts to disrupt its networks.

“More Al Qaeda have been caught in Pakistan and in Saudi Arabia than any other place in the world. And so they are working very hard with us. We have excellent cooperation on that,” she said.

Commenting on recent media reports that the group was staging a comeback, Ms Rice said the terror network had taken a number of blows and most of its generals, who led Al Qaeda troops before Sept 11, 2001, had disappeared.