President Barack Obama Sunday acknowledged fierce opposition to his plans to bring accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to justice in New York, but would not rule out such a trial, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that al-Qaeda still poses a greater danger than nuclear Iran.
The administration had hoped to prosecute Sheikh Mohammed and four co-defendants in a federal court in lower Manhattan, close to the site of the World Trade Center attack which killed nearly 3,000 people in 2001.But the plan has faced blanket opposition from local lawmakers and authorities who have balked at the huge costs of such a trial, while others have warned of perceived security implications.
"I have not ruled it out, but I think it is important for us to take into account the practical logistical issues involved," Obama said in a live interview from the White House on CBS.
"If you have got a city that is saying no, and a police department that is saying no, and a mayor that is saying no, that makes it difficult," Obama said.
But he added: "we have not ruled out anything -- we will make a definitive judgment based on consultations with all the relevant authorities."
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg initially welcomed the idea of holding a Sept. 11 trial in New York, but reversed his position last month, saying that a military base would make more sense as a venue.
Sheikh Mohammed and the four co-defendants are currently incarcerated in the Guantanamo Bay U.S. military facility in Cuba, which Obama says he will close down, although he has missed a one-year deadline to do so.
Republicans have also adamantly opposed any trial on the U.S. mainland for Sept. 11 suspects, arguing it would become a "show trial" and a recruitment tool for al-Qaeda.
But Obama argued in his interview that his administration was using similar methods for terror suspects as the former Bush administration, which processed some al-Qaeda conspirators through the civilian court system.
Clinton on Sunday said that the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran is "real" for the United States but al-Qaeda poses an even greater danger.
She gave the interview before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered Iran's atomic chief on Sunday to begin higher uranium enrichment, raising the stakes in its long-running dispute with the West over its nuclear ambitions.
"In terms of a country, obviously a nuclear-armed country like North Korea or Iran pose both a real or a potential threat," Clinton told CNN's "State of the Union", making it clear the Iranians don't yet possess an atomic weapon.
"But I think that most of us believe the greater threats are the trans-national non-state networks," she said, referring to al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Afghanistan, North Africa, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
Clinton voiced concerns about al-Qaeda's level of "connectivity" and said Osama bin Laden's terror networks were continuing to "increase the sophistication of their capacity" and the kind of attacks they were planning.
The U.S. city of Detroit had a narrow escape on Christmas Day when a young Nigerian claiming allegiance to al-Qaeda, Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, botched an attempt to bring down a packed transatlantic airliner as it began its descent.
