The capture of Abu Farraj al-Libbi, Al Qaeda's new No. 3 leader, in a remote region of Pakistan is a major step forward in the fight against terrorism, according to government officials and terror experts.

"Abu Farraj al-Libbi's one of the hard-core Al Qaeda members," says Bruce Hoffman, a terror expert at the RAND Corp. in Washington. "He's not as well-known to Americans as many of the 9/11-era Al Qaeda leaders. But since Al Qaeda's expulsion from Afghanistan, he has become an increasingly important player - stepping into the role vacated by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed."

Mr. Libbi, whose capture Monday was made public only Wednesday, isn't considered to be as sophisticated or talented as Mr. Mohammed, who is credited with hatching the 9/11 plot and others, and who also was captured in Pakistan in 2003.

But after Al Qaeda was evicted from Afghanistan in 2001, Libbi allegedly traveled with Osama bin Laden, seeking refuge in the border region of Pakistan.

Since then, the Pakistani government has placed him on their top-six list of terrorists, accusing him of engineering several attacks, including two assassination attempts on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in December 2003.

Those attempts on Mr. Musharraf's life - in which 17 others died - came quite close, experts say, indicating that Libbi was an Al Qaeda up-and-comer with good command of intelligence, surveillance, and planning.

Musharraf himself named the Libyan as the chief suspect, the "mastermind" of the assassination attempts, and the government in 2004 placed an advertisement in Pakistani newspapers that showed Libbi dressed in a Western suit, with a trimmed beard. A reward of 20 million rupees (about $335,000) was offered at the time for any information that might lead to his capture.

"He's definitely an operator and a very important guy," says Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit.

Now security officials say they will question him about the location of Mr. bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

"We don't have any information about Osama or Zawahiri being in Pakistan or in the tribal region," says Aftab Ahmed Sherpao, Pakistan's federal interior minister. "We can say we can get good information about Al Qaeda's network from him, but we cannot say whether his information could give us useful clues about bin Laden's whereabouts."

Pakistan has been a major battleground in the fight against Al Qaeda since the 9/11 terror attacks on the US. And Pakistan has been both applauded and criticized by the US in its efforts to rein in terror groups there.

President Musharraf, as the assassination attempts show, walks a fine line between running a transparent government and dealing with Islamic fundamentalism there.

This past year, for example, Pakistan waged a huge security offensive in the North West Frontier province, known as a tribal area that hasn't responded well to central government intervention.

It has also built new roads and schools in the region in an attempt to win over the allegiance of tribal leaders there.

Meanwhile, hundreds of local and foreign militants have been killed by Pakistan's security forces in the tribal belt during the past year. And Pakistan has handed over some 700 suspected Al Qaeda militants to the US, most of whom have been captured in cities and towns rather than the remote, mountainous region bordering Afghanistan.

Among those captured in major cities and handed over to the US by Pakistan are top-ranking members Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh, and Abu Zubaydah. Those three are in US custody in an undisclosed location, and have apparently provided a wealth of information to US interrogators.

But Pakistani officials say they will not hand over Libbi to the US, as he is wanted - and will be charged - in Pakistan for the assassination attempts on Musharraf.

Still, Pakistan has also received large doses of criticism from US government officials. Many of them say the Pakistani leader hasn't gone far enough to root out terrorists.

In a two-part interview aired on National Public Radio this week, former CIA operative Gary Schroen, who led the hunt for bin Laden immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said he didn't think Musharraf was doing all he could to apprehend Al Qaeda members.

But Wednesday, President Bush applauded the Pakistani government's apprehension of Libbi, a man Mr. Bush said was a "major facilitator and chief planner for Al Qaeda," and also implied that Pakistan acted on US intelligence.

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