Marines 'raring to go'

Geoff Hoon: Caves may be attacked

Royal Marine commandos may attack caves in Afghanistan to find Osama Bin Laden, said Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon.

On a visit to see soldiers in Oman, Mr Hoon said it could be a week before marines went into action but that they were raring to go.

We need to exert pressure to limit the opportunities that he [Bin Laden] and his supporters have to move around the country

Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon

However he revealed that the coalition forces still had no idea where Bin Laden was.

Earlier the Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Sir Michael Boyce warned that the campaign against terrorism might last half a century.

Nightly move

Speaking in the Omani capital, Muscat, Mr Hoon said he believed that Bin Laden was moving to a different hide-out every night.

Geoff Hoon praised the elite troops' military expertise

A total of 200 troops from 40 Commando have been committed by the UK to ground offensives in Afghanistan.

Mr Hoon praised the marines saying that their expertise would be crucial in finding Bin Laden.

"They have got a range of specialist capabilities and some of the strikes from the air have been against caves.

"We assume that a number of the hiding places of Osama bin Laden employs are in the ground and that capability would be enormously important," he said.

He continued: "The means to take people out of caves involves a lot of brave people attacking what can be a very well defended position.

"We need to exert pressure to limit the opportunities that he and his supporters have to move around the country."

He said that, on a visit to the marines' training centre at Lympstone, Devon, he had a "very considerable number of complaints that they had not seen enough action and when was I going to sort it out?"

New 'Cold War'

Earlier Admiral Sir Michael Boyce compared the campaign to a new Cold War and said the conflict in Afghanistan was the most difficult Britain had faced since the Korean War in the 1950s.

We are fighting a concept not a state and are having to re-write the rule book

Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Sir Michael Boyce

He said the war against communism had taken 50 years of constant pressure.

And Mr Hoon, speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Saturday, said they recognised the military difficulties of the operation.

Sir Michael said the initial campaign in Afghanistan could last three to four years but, whereas in the Falklands war and the Gulf War there were identifiable enemies, the al-Qaeda organisation was not tangible.

"We are fighting a concept not a state and are having to re-write the rule book," he continued.

Sir Michael admitted it would be "extraordinarily difficult" to achieve the military objectives unless the Taleban regime "folded".

"This is the most difficult operation we have undertaken," he added.

Military setbacks

The assessment comes after setbacks for the alliance against terror.

On Friday US Navy fighters and B-52 bombers mistakenly bombed six warehouses used by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), destroying food.

And on Thursday the United Nations confirmed that nine people had been killed when a US cluster bomb landed near a village in western Afghanistan on Monday.

The UK marines on standby will form part of a force of 4,200 personnel supported by a substantial amount of hardware.

Aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious, a submarine armed with cruise missiles, the destroyer HMS Southampton and the frigate HMS Cornwall are remaining in the region.

Seven Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships and four support aircraft are staying behind too.

Another 400 troops from 40 Commando will be on standby in Britain when they return to their base in Taunton, Somerset from Oman next week.