Bin Laden 'seen in Afghanistan in early 2009'

Bin Laden is believed to be somewhere along the Pakistan-Afghan border

A Taliban detainee in Pakistan claims to have information about Osama Bin Laden's whereabouts in January or February of this year.

His claims cannot be verified, but a leading American expert says his account should be investigated.
The detainee claims to have met Osama Bin Laden numerous times before 9/11.
He claims that in January or February he met a trusted contact who had seen Bin Laden about 15 to 20 days earlier in Afghanistan.
"In 2009, in January or February I met this friend of mine. He said he had come from meeting Sheikh Osama, and he could arrange for me to meet him," he said.
"He helps al-Qaeda people coming from other countries to get to the sheikh, so he can advise them on whatever they are planning for Europe or other places.
"The sheikh doesn't stay in any one place. That guy came from Ghazni, so I think that's where the sheikh was."
The province of Ghazni in eastern Afghanistan has an increasingly strong Taliban presence.
Large parts of the province are no-go areas for coalition and Afghan forces.
He says he declined the invitation to travel to meet Bin Laden because he was afraid of compromising his security, if he was captured by the police or the army.
"If I had met him, the first question they would have asked would be where have you met him, and I would have had more problems and it would have created problems for them [al-Qaeda]."
According to a Pakistani security official the detainee has close ties with leaders of the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and was involved in kidnapping and fund-raising operations in the north-western city of Peshawar.

The entire Western intelligence community, CIA and M16, have been looking for [Osama Bin Laden]for the last seven years, and haven't come upon a source of information like this Bruce Riedel Former CIA analyst

The detainee, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said that militants were avoiding Pakistani territory because of the risk of US drone attacks.
"Pakistan at this time is not convenient for us to stay in because a lot of our senior people are being martyred in drone attacks," he said.
We were given access to him twice in the past month. He spoke at length and in detail, painting a picture of close co-operation between the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
A Pakistani interrogator was listening as he spoke.
His account suits Pakistan, which maintains that Bin Laden is not on its soil, though Britain and the US think otherwise.
But US counter-terrorism expert Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst, says his story is "a very important lead, that ought to be tracked down."
"The entire Western intelligence community, CIA and M16, have been looking for OBL [Osama Bin Laden] for the last seven years, and haven't come upon a source of information like this.
"So, if it's true - a big 'if' - this is an extraordinary and important story," he said.
"We know Osama Bin Laden is alive. We know that he is living somewhere in the badlands along the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"What's extraordinary about this story is we have someone who has come forward and said, really for the first time, 'I met with Osama Bin Laden and I had the opportunity to met him again in the recent past'."
Active and healthy
The detainee claims that Bin Laden is well, though there has been speculation for years that he was in poor health.
"What my associate told me was that he is fresh, and doing well," he said.
He also claims the al-Qaeda leader is still active, training instructors who in turn train others.
"The information I have is that he provides training to special people. There are training centres in homes, and all the teachers are first trained by the Sheikh. Then they go and teach the classes."
The detainee's account raises a lot of questions - among them, what were his motives for talking.
Western interrogators may have lots of questions they would like to ask, but so far the detainee has been out of their reach.

Putin says no plans to leave power

By Michael Stott and Gleb Bryanski



MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, in power for over 10 years, ruled out a departure from politics on Thursday, telling a questioner: "Don't hold your breath."
The country's most powerful leader made the comment with a smile when asked on his annual televised question and answer session with the Russian people if he would like to leave politics and start a quiet life.
Putin, 57, also said he "will think about" taking part in the 2012 presidential election, when many Russians expect him to return to the Kremlin for a six-year term.
Looking relaxed and confident, Putin said Russia had passed the peak of the economic crisis and reassured callers worried about job security, pensions and living standards.
"The economy has grown by an average of 0.5 percent per month over the last five months," Putin said in the session, broadcast live nationwide by state television and radio. "I'm counting on these positive trends in economic development becoming more significant in the middle of next year."
Putin's eighth annual phone-in entitled "A Conversation with Vladimir Putin. The Sequel" showed the premier back on form after an uncharacteristically subdued performance last year amid the economic crisis.
Commenting on everything from Russia's football performance to the brand value of Lada cars, Putin showed the mastery of detail, firm command, trademark frankness and humor which has made him the country's most popular politician.
An increase in oil prices has pulled the Russian economy back from the brink of collapse this year but despite billions of dollars of government aid, Russia still lags far behind emerging market peers such as Brazil, India and China.
Many questioners asked Putin about their jobs and their pensions, including workers in the town of Pikalyovo, which the premier visited in the summer to help a cement factory threatened with closure and scold its oligarch owner.
"The situation in one-industry towns, including Pikalyovo, is under control," Putin said.
RUSSIAN NOUVEAUX RICHES "A PROBLEM"
Asked why nobody was in jail for allowing the crisis to hit Pikalyovo, the prime minister shot back: "If we put everyone in jail, who would work?"
Putin had harsh words for Russia's new rich, saying the way they flaunted their wealth was wrong, and implicitly condemning a group of young Russians whose Lamborghini and Bugatti luxury sports cars crashed recently in Switzerland.
"The nouveau riche all of a sudden got rich very quickly but cannot manage their wealth without showing it off all the time. Yes, this is our problem," Putin said.
"In Soviet times some of our rich showed off their wealth by having gold teeth put in, preferably at the front. The Lamborghinis and other pricey knickknacks -- they are simply today's gold teeth which are shown off to everybody."
The televised question and answer session was conducted in a specially built Moscow studio with invited guests.
It included video links to Pikalyovo, to an aircraft plant in a Far Eastern city and to the turbine room of the giant Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric dam in Siberia, damaged in an August accident which killed 75.
All questions were screened in advance and access to the Moscow studio and the video link-up locations was by invitation only. Journalists were not given access to the questioners.
Enthusiastic presenters beamed as they counted more than two million questions submitted by phone, internet and text message.
Foreign affairs were barely mentioned in a session dominated by domestic issues.
Putin reassured a grieving widow from the dam about her children's education, calmed factory workers worried about their jobs, joked over his sometimes awkward relationship with the leader of neighboring Belarus and condemned terrorism.
Islamist rebels have claimed responsibility for detonating a bomb under a luxury express train as it traveled from Moscow to St Petersburg last week, derailing and wrecking carriages and killing 26 people, including some senior officials.
Putin said Russia would "break the spine" of terrorism and demanded tough action against "criminals" who attacked their own people. "The threat of terrorism remains very high," he added.
A caller said that an old woman near the train crash site who cared for the victims, lived in horrible conditions and her fence was damaged during rescue work.
"You have a good heart. Just like this old woman. Do not worry, everything will be fine with her," Putin said, adding that Russian Railways had already doubled the old woman's pension and would fix her fence and the house.
Helped by lavish coverage on state media and an absence of credible political opponents, Putin still dominates Russian politics 10 years after he was first picked as a successor by ailing then-president Boris Yeltsin.
Although his ratings have drooped slightly to an eight-month low of 65 percent, down from 72 percent in mid-October, according to the FOM pollster, they remain numbers most politicians would envy after 10 years of rule.
They also outshine those of his hand-picked successor Dmitry Medvedev, who most Russians believe has little real power. It was almost two hours into the question session before Putin mentioned Medvedev's name at all.
He later told a questioner asking about their "tandem" system of government that he and Medvedev worked well together and shared common values.
"We graduated from the same university, had the same teachers, who not only gave us the same knowledge but also a common approach to life. Those common principles allow us to work efficiently today," he said.
(Editing by Ralph Boulton.)

Obama's revealing Afghanistan war speech: 4,582 words and not one of them was 'victory'

December 2, 2009 |  3:08 am

President Obama spoke 4,582 words in his primetime Afghanistan war speech at West Point last night.

He said "al Qaeda" 22 times.
He mentioned the "Taliban" 12 times.
And here's how many times the Democratic chief executive used the word "victory" -- 0.
That telling omission says more than anything about Obama's 322d day in office when he gave his first major address as the United States' commander-in-chief.
Through a clever, timely use of leaks late Monday and suggestive advance excerpts Tuesday afternoon, the Obama White House communications team used the public and news media's intense curiosity about his war decisions to steer public attention toward the number of additional American troops he'll dispatch into that war-torn land in the first half of 2010.
That number is 30,000, significantly less than some reported numbers requested by the ground commander. But added to the existing 68,000 there and taken out of context, that would appear....

...to show a strong commitment to persevering in the bloody struggle, now entering its ninth year, that has claimed 936 American lives and another 596 allies, mainly Canadians and Brits.
But reading the speech over and over overnight, another, far stronger impression comes through: Limits.
As former White House communications strategist David Gergen puts it succinctly, "The cavalry is coming. But not for long."
Perhaps appropriately for someone who just won the Nobel Peace Prize while sending thousands more fellow citizens into war, Obama's speech is not a bold cry to rally the nation for battle, as Franklin Roosevelt's was after the Pearl Harbor attack 68 years ago next Monday.
Obama's was instead a well-crafted, nicely-wrapped political speech that calmly attempts to give something to everybody, those concerned over national security and his Democratic Party's antiwar left.
The president offers firm resolve to disrupt and dismantle terrorist ability to organize in Afghanistan along with a promised deadline to get out of Dodge in 2011. Assurances of getting the bad guys even if they're inside Pakistan along with an unsubtle threat to Afghanistan's corrupt and impotent central government. A threat, btw, that Obama made with last March's troop surge to no Afghan avail.
In so carefully tacking to and fro, though, Obama may have left both sides feeling unsatisfied. A new Gallup Poll shows approval of his war handling nearing one-in-three, down from 56% last summer. "The United States," Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich charged, despite the speech, "should get out of Afghanistan and stop the escalation."
Now, the Taliban and its extremist cohorts know when U.S. troops will start leaving. And so do America's would-be Afghan collaborators whose eagerness to collaborate may well be tempered by the knowledge that they'll be left alone at home before the end of the American president's first term.
Zalmay Khalizad, who praised parts of Obama's address, recounts a story that as U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, he once received a direct message from the Taliban: "You have all the watches. But we have all the time."
After tracing the history of U.S. military involvement there post-9/11....


... (and recounting his ongoing withdrawal of American forces from Iraq), here's how Obama put it, tacking to: "As Commander-in-Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan."
The very next sentence is tacking fro: "After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home." As if any military commander can foresee the battlefield 18 days ahead, let alone 18 months. And that's 18 months from surge start, only about 12 from surge end. Not a long time in a genuine counter-insurgency.
Some other revealing presidential excerpts about limits:

I believe that we must exercise restraint in the use of military force, and always consider the long-term consequences of our actions....
Years of debate over Iraq and terrorism have left our unity on national security issues in tatters, and created a highly polarized and partisan backdrop for this effort. And having just experienced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the American people are understandably focused on rebuilding our economy and putting people to work here at home....
These additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.

The next sentence, tacking to again, is aimed at a perennial problem for Democrats. That is, talk of cutting and running from a national security fight, so seared were they by Vietnam war turmoil that saw Republicans win five of the next six presidential elections. Obama added: "Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this transition responsibly."
However, the president then adds seven words carefully giving himself an out should the promised 18 months actually prove insufficient: "taking into account conditions on the ground."
Much as the practical realities of his much-hailed promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison in calendar 2009 have now pushed the closure well back into 2010.
Other passages:

The days of providing a blank check are over...(He mentions those who prefer not setting an exit schedule) I reject this course because it sets goals that are beyond what we can achieve at a reasonable cost, and what we need to achieve to secure our interests....I refuse to set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means, or our interests....Our troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended – because the nation that I am most interested in building is our own.

All carefully-calculated, well-phrased tactical talk. But no words of winning a victory for the war's immense dollar costs -- $30 billion more just for the latest surge this fiscal year. Or for all the lives and limbs lost so far -- and the additional losses yet to come, possibly from among his audience of young Army cadets.
Meaning what? This is really a holding action? The professorial president doesn't expect victory? He's uncomfortable with talk of actually winning a war that he's sending more troops into?
One other interesting war speech stat: President Obama mentioned himself 44 times.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Obama Approval on Afghanistan, at 35%, Trails Other Issues

Decline from 49% in September far exceeds that for other issues and for approval more broadly

by Jeffrey M. Jones

PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans are far less approving of President Obama's handling of the situation in Afghanistan than they have been in recent months, with 35% currently approving, down from 49% in September and 56% in July.

"The decline in Obama's approval rating on Afghanistan is evident among all party groups, with double-digit decreases since September among Republicans (17 points), independents (16 points), and Democrats (10 points)."

Tuesday, Obama outlines his new strategy for the war in Afghanistan in a nationally televised address. The policy has been months in the making as Obama held numerous meetings with his military and foreign policy advisers, drawing some criticism for the delay in formulating a new strategy. The commanding U.S. general in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has recommended that the United States increase the number of troops it has in that country by about 40,000. Obama is expected to announce a slightly smaller increase.
The decline in Obama's approval rating on Afghanistan is evident among all party groups, with double-digit decreases since September among Republicans (17 points), independents (16 points), and Democrats (10 points).

While a slim majority of Obama's fellow Democrats approve of his handling of the issue, his new policy may not be well-received by Democrats, who have indicated opposition to troop-level increases in Afghanistan. The details of the policy will likely be more appealing to Republicans, who are supportive of putting more U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
The question about Afghanistan comes from a Nov. 20-22 USA Today/Gallup poll that also asked Americans to rate Obama's handling of six other issues. The president registers less than majority approval for his performance on all seven issues, with Afghanistan his worst rating. His best rating is on energy policy, with 49% approval.

Obama's overall job approval rating has also been below the majority level for most of the time since Nov. 20 in Gallup Daily tracking, though it has inched back above the 50% mark in recent days.
The 14-point decline in Obama's approval rating on Afghanistan stands in contrast to the trend lines on other issues, including the economy, healthcare, and energy. While his current ratings on these issues are down since September, the declines have been fairly minimal.

Bottom Line
The president's decisions on U.S. military action in Afghanistan are arguably among the most important and difficult of his presidency. He met several times with his advisers in recent weeks before outlining his new policy to the American public Tuesday night. The speech gives the president a chance to regain the confidence of Americans on the issue, after a sharp drop in his ratings over the past two months.
But the decline in Americans' evaluations of Obama on Afghanistan does not appear to have greatly affected their more general views of him, as his overall job approval rating -- though down slightly since September -- has not declined to nearly the same degree as his rating on Afghanistan.

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Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,017 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Nov. 20-22, 2009. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

Obama Channels Bush

Tonight we watched Obama address the cadets of West Point and, over their shoulder, the American people.  I kept asking myself: if I were in the audience did I hear anything worth risking my life for?

There is a lot in Afghanistan worth risking one's life for, but Obama sure didn't summon it.

Watching President Obama address the nation, the right probably recognized the incongruity of sending additional troops on a difficult mission and setting, at the same time, a very short timetable for their withdrawal.  The right doubtless wondered why the Taliban won't just wait Obama out and move in after he leaves.

But the political cost of this speech will not come on the right.  Obama will get the support of everyone who won't ever vote for him.  But it is with his base on the left that he will be in trouble.

His volunteers, his backers, his donors have to have watched that speech and asked themselves "why did we win the election?"  Obama sounded just like Bush.  More articulate, perhaps, but substantively precisely the same.

His decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, an odd move for a peace candidate, his failure to close Guantanamo, our continued military presence in Iraq, and his failure to act on liberal priorities like gays in the military and immigration reform, are all sapping his support from those who voted for him.

For those with memories of Vietnam, the task of backing a corrupt regime summons the most unpleasant of comparisons.

Obama looked out of place giving a speech he didn't believe in.  He seemed like he was reading a communiqué.  His focus on pulling out, even as he was going in, reminded one of Bill Clinton defining what the meaning of 'is' is.

This speech will inflame the left and that is the real threat to Obama's base.

Even in the health care debate, the under 30 voters are learning that they are targeted -- just like the elderly -- for special punishment in Obama's health care bill.  When they realize that they must spend $15,000 on average per family for health insurance or face a fine of 2.5% of their income or go to prison, the bill loses its appeal.   And, when they find out how shallow the subsidies are (only after they spend 8% of their paychecks if their household income is $45,000 a year and 12% if it is $65,000), they begin to turn off both the bill and the president for whom they were once so enthusiastic.

Then he is losing popularity on issues that have nothing to do with ideology.  It all begins with unemployment.  While voters still believe by 50-42 (Rasmussen) that Bush is more at fault than Obama for the economy, Bush is not on the ballot.  The high jobless rate nurtures a belief that Obama doesn't really know what he is doing. This discontent need not take the form of ideological opposition to the stimulus package or the deficit spending.  It can merely be a sense that things aren't going right.

And then come the adjectives.  Voters are increasingly complaining that Obama is weak, vacillates, does not keep his promises, spends too much time on other priorities than jobs, and seems egotistical. 

All polls have Obama below 50 and some, like Harris, have him all the way down to 43% in job approval.  These surveys mean that Obama, who won 52% of the vote, is now losing between one in ten and one in five of his voters.

This erosion of support makes the elections of 2010 look more and more like a rerun of 1994.  It is now reasonable to predict -- and I do -- that the GOP will take both houses of Congress.

In the Senate, the Republicans are likely to hold all their vacant seats with the possible exception of New Hampshire.  Incumbent Democrats Dodd (Ct), Specter (Pa), Lincoln (Ark), Reid (Nev), and Bennett (Col) are the low hanging fruit.  Among the open seats, Delaware seems ripe for the Republicans.  Add to these six seats, two more if Rudy Giuliani challenges Kristin Gillibrand in New York and if North Dakota governor Hoeven takes on Dorgan.  Mark Kirk could the ninth pickup in Illinois.  And, in a Republican sweep, you have to respect GOP chances in California and New Jersey.

A deluge swamps all boats.

On Capitol Hill, the Democrats seem to have almost abandoned the message war on health care.  They are hunkering down and focused on keeping their troops in line.  The appeals to party discipline are so strong that one senses that they are prepared to march, in lock-step, over the cliff together.

When one considers where Obama was only a year ago and where he is today, the fall is simply stunning.  That he clings to the staff that helped him take it is amazing.  This has to be the least successful White House since, well, Clinton's 1993-94 crowd.  In fact, its many of the same people!

John Kerry's Tora Bora Campaign

The Senator is now in favor of more troops after he was against them.

President Obama unveils his new Afghanistan strategy today, and in the nick of time Senator John Kerry has arrived with a report claiming that none of this would be necessary if former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had only deployed more troops eight years ago. Yes, he really said more troops.
In a 43-page report issued yesterday by his Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Kerry says bin Laden and deputy Ayman Zawahiri were poised for capture at the Tora Bora cave complex in late 2001. But because of the "unwillingness" of Mr. Rumsfeld and his generals "to deploy the troops required to take advantage of solid intelligence and unique circumstances to kill or capture bin Laden," the al Qaeda leaders escaped.
This in turn "paved the way for exactly what we had hoped to avoid—a protracted insurgency that has cost more lives than anyone estimates would have been lost in a full-blown assault on Tora Bora."
The timing of the report's release suggests that Mr. Kerry intends this as political cover for Mr. Obama and Democrats, and some in the press corps have even taken it seriously. But coming from Mr. Kerry, of all people, this criticism is nothing short of astonishing.
In 2001, readers may recall, the Washington establishment that included Mr. Kerry was fretting about the danger in Afghanistan from committing too many troops. The New York Times made the "quagmire" point explicitly in a famous page-one analysis, and Seymour Hersh fed the cliche at The New Yorker.
On CNN with Larry King on Dec. 15, 2001, a viewer called in to say the U.S. should "smoke [bin Laden] out" of the Tora Bora caves. Mr. Kerry responded: "For the moment what we are doing, I think, is having its impact and it is the best way to protect our troops and sort of minimalize the proximity, if you will. I think we have been doing this pretty effectively and we should continue to do it that way." The Rumsfeld-General Tommy Franks troop strategy may have missed bin Laden, but it reflected domestic political doubts about an extended Afghan campaign.
Remarkably, Mr. Kerry is now repeating those same doubts about Mr. Obama's troop decision, saying that the "Afghans must do the heavy lifting" and that he supports additional troops only for "limited purposes" and wants the U.S. out within "four to five years." Adapting his legendary 2004 campaign locution, Mr. Kerry is now in favor of more troops after he was against them, but in any case not for very long.

 

Dubai says not responsible for Dubai World debt

By Rania Oteify and Tamara Walid Rania Oteify And Tamara Walid – Mon Nov 30, 6:00 pm ET

DUBAI (Reuters) – The Dubai government said on Monday it was not responsible for the debts of Dubai World, dealing a blow to creditors' assumptions that the Arab emirate would guarantee the conglomerate's liabilities.
"Creditors need to take part of the responsibility for their decision to lend to the companies," said Abdulrahman al-Saleh, director general of Dubai's Department of Finance. "They think Dubai World is part of the government, which is not correct."
In its first statement since the crisis began, Dubai World, the government-controlled holding company at the heart of the storm, said a restructuring would involve $26 billion in debt and mostly affect its property firms, Nakheel and Limitless.
Other firms, such as DP World, Jebel Ali Free Zone and Istithmar World would not be included in the restructuring because they were financially stable, it said in a statement released by e-mail late on Monday night.
The previously unreleased figure of $26 billion may help markets to grapple with the scope of the crisis following estimates that the restructuring could affect $59 billion or more in liabilities.
United Arab Emirates stocks plunged on Monday as investors waited for clarity on Dubai's request for a delay until May 2010 on repaying billions of dollars in debt issued by Dubai World and its Nakheel unit, developer of three distinctive palm-shaped islands in the emirate.
European shares fell as investors worried about sovereign financial crises, with the FTSEurofirst 300 off 1.4 percent. But the U.S. dollar fell against the euro after the United Arab Emirates promised liquidity, easing worries about default.
Saleh's remarks in an interview to Dubai TV, a station owned by the ruler of Dubai, came after UAE markets closed.
"They have confirmed there is going to be a restructuring and are doing what they can to differentiate between the government and companies," said Mohieddine Kronfol, managing director at Algebra Capital.
"It doesn't take away from the fact that you have a major potential event that is unraveling. People's expectations aren't going to be met with this announcement."
The UAE's central bank pledged financial support, helping to steady global markets.
The central bank promised additional liquidity to local banks and an official in Dubai's oil-exporting neighbor, Abu Dhabi, said on Sunday it would offer selective support to Dubai firms.
Without referring directly to the Dubai World debt problems, the UAE's central bank governor said on Monday there was no cause for concern about local banks, which he said had proven themselves able to weather the global crisis.
"I have advice for foreign investors. They should study available investment opportunities and conduct realistic feasibility studies to make sure they are real opportunities with no risk," the state news agency WAM quoted Sultan Nasser al-Suweidi as saying.
Michael Ganske, head of emerging market research at Commerzbank in London, said a default, which could ultimately benefit the region, "is becoming more likely.
"At the end of the day it should be positive for Dubai, Dubai's sovereign risk should go down," he said.
Dubai World -- which had $59 billion of liabilities as of August -- shocked investors last week with news of the standstill request while it restructures, along with its property developer Nakheel. The agreement would affect about $5.7 billion of debt due to mature before the end of May.
Nakheel earlier on Monday asked for three of its Islamic bonds, worth a total of $5.25 billion, to be suspended on Nasdaq Dubai until it was in a position to "fully inform the market.
STANDALONE ENTITY
Saleh made clear on Monday that while the government owned Dubai World, the conglomerate had long operated as a stand-alone entity and was never guaranteed by the emirate's government.
"It deals with all parties on this basis and it borrows based on ... its projects and not the guarantee of the government," Saleh said.
When contacted by Reuters and asked whether Dubai could still repay its Nakheel bond, Saleh declined to comment.
The head of a Dubai budget committee said the government's own debt was $10 billion. "Dubai government's debts have been declared. They are only 10 billions. There should be no confusion between (the government) and any company," Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, also Dubai's police chief, told Al Arabiya television.
Dubai World Chairman Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem also declined to comment on Monday. Other Dubai World officials could not immediately be reached.
John Sfakianakis, chief economist at Banque Saudi Fransi-Credit Agricole Group, said the distinction between the Dubai government and the flagship company appeared minimal.
"What role does the sovereign play? This continues to create uncertainty," he said from Riyadh. "Their motivation is to make a distinction between the two, but the difference ... is nebulous."
Saleh said he believed the market reaction to last Wednesday's announcement by Dubai World, which initially shook global financial confidence, was exaggerated.
"The restructuring is a wise decision that is in the interest of all parties in the long-term but might bother creditors in the short term," he declared.
(Additional reporting by Raissa Kasolowsky, John Irish in Dubai and Carolyn Cohn in London; Writing by Amran Abocar and Firouz Sedarat; Editing by Alistair Lyon, John Stonestreet, Kenneth Barry and Dan Grebler)