WASHINGTON, May 9: US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates told a congressional panel on Wednesday that the United States has military missions in the tribal area to go after Al Qaeda leaders hiding there.

At a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Mr Gates said Al Qaeda had established training facilities in Fata and the extremist leaders based there also had links to terror cells in other parts of the world.

“We know that Al Qaeda has re-established itself in the Federally-Administered Territories on the western border of Pakistan where they are training new recruits,” Mr Gates told the Senate panel while defending his department’s budget for 2008.

“They have established linkages now in North Africa. And so … Al Qaeda has actually expanded, I would say, its organisation and its capabilities.”

Expounding on his statement, Senator Byron Dorgan, a Democrat, asked Mr Gates if there were US military missions in that area pursuing Al Qaeda activists.

“Yes, sir. We are still going after the Al Qaeda leadership,” said Mr Gates.

He then explained that Al Qaeda was operating from an area which was difficult, “both in terms of terrain and in terms of politics in terms of our ability to range freely in that area.”

He said as he had indicated earlier, most of Al Qaeda activities were concentrated in the western part of Pakistan in Fata.

“But we do have military operations that are planned … not just in North Waziristan and Iraq, but in other places as well, to go after Al Qaeda leadership,” he added.