British Prime Minister David Cameron told the White House on Sunday that he intended to stand shoulder to shoulder with US President Barack Obama as the US stepped up its global hunt for leading jihadists, British newspaper the Daily Telegraph said in a report on Sunday. It was understood, said the report, that Cameron had given his approval for elite British troops to be used beyond Afghanistan in order to “decapitate” the al Qaeda leadership.
Defence sources had said that the hunt for leading jihadists, such as Ayman al-Zawahri, al Qaeda’s second-in-command, and Mullah Omar, the former Taliban leader, would continue in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, said the report. In a separate development, said the report, a senior defence source also revealed that Britain would have launched the same military action as the US if the government had located the whereabouts of bin Laden.
