The director of the CIA has conceded that the war in Afghanistan has been "harder and slower" than expected.

中情局主管承认，阿富汗战争比预期要“艰难、缓慢”。

Speaking on US television Leon Panetta said while progress had been made in Afghanistan, serious problems with governance, corruption¹ and the Taliban insurgency²（叛乱，暴动） remained.

Mr Panetta's comments come as Gen David Petraeus takes over command of multinational³ forces in Afghanistan, following the sacking（解雇） of Gen Stanley McChrystal.

Gen McChrystal was dismissed last week over critical comments about senior US officials.

Speaking to ABC This Week programme Mr Panetta insisted that "the fundamental key is whether the Afghans accept responsibility" for taking over the battle against the insurgency once foreign troops pull out of the country.

Drones defended

Mr Panetta defended CIA drone strikes on senior al-Qaeda of Taliban leaders in the region, saying that claims they violate international law are "dead wrong".

"We have a duty, we have a responsibility, to defend this country so that al-Qaeda never conducts that kind of attack again," he said.

Mr Panetta said that al-Qaeda was probably at its weakest since the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US.

He said 50 to 100 militants⁴ were operating inside Afghanistan and the rest hiding along Pakistan's mountainous western border region.

"We are engaged in the most aggressive operations in the history of the CIA in that part of the world, and the result is that we are disrupting their leadership," Mr Panetta told ABC television.

He said the US had not had good intelligence on Osama Bin⁵ Laden's whereabouts（下落，行踪） for years.

Mr Panetta said that the al-Qaeda network was finding new ways to try to attack the United States. Of greatest concern, he said, was al-Qaida's reliance on（依靠，信赖） operatives without previous records or those living in the US.