U.S. Intelligence officials said that Osama bin Laden wanted to move the base of operations for his al-Qaida terrorist network from Afghanistan to Southeast Asia in 2000. The plan, according to these officials’ intelligence report, was to move the base to Aceh in Indonesia, where members of the Free Aceh movement (or GAM) were working with al-Qaida. Aceh is a remote Muslim province in which rebels have fought for a separate Islamic state for decades. Bin Laden’s No. 2, Egyptian Ayman Al-Zawahiri visited Aceh with al-Qaida’s former military chief, Mohammed Atef, in June 2000. “Both of them were impressed by the lack of security, the support and extent of Muslim population,” reads the intelligence report. “This visit was part of a wider strategy of shifting the base of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist operations from the subcontinent to Southeast Asia.” Al-Zawahiri and Atef were accompanied by two men now in custody: Kuwaiti Omar al-Faruq and Indonesian Agus Dwikarna. Asian intelligence sources say that al-Faruq was al-Qaida’s senior representative in Southeast Asia.  (SD-Agencies)