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ments the U.S. needs to fight the group in the future and do little to slow the growing terror threat in North Africa.
• Details on the administration's position and on its search for a possible target were provided by three current and one former administration official, as well as an analyst who was approached by the White House for help. All four spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the high-level debates publicly.
• In another effort to bolster Libyan security, the Pentagon and State Department have been developing a plan to train and equip a special operations force in Libya, according to a senior defense official.
• The efforts show the tension of the White House's need to demonstrate it is responding forcefully to al-Qaida, balanced against its long-term plans to develop relationships and trust with local governments and build a permanent U.S. counterterrorist network in the region.
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• GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) -- A military tribunal reconvenes Tuesday for five men charged in the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, but the defendants may sit this session out.
• The judge presiding over the case has ruled, over the objections of prosecutors, that the defendants have the right to be absent from a weeklong pretrial hearing in a case considered to be one of the most significant terrorism cases in U.S. history.
• A lawyer for one of the five says he expects his client will not be there, while attorneys for the other men said they weren't sure what would happen, and that the men would likely wait until the last-minute to decide as the judge has given them the leeway to do.
• "They have the right to come to court or they have the right not to come to court, that's what the judge decided," James Connell, a lawyer for defendant Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said after Monday's ruling.
• The chief prosecutor, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, had argued that the rules for the special war-time tribunals known as military commissions required the defendants to attend all sessions of the court at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba.
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