U.S President Says he'll continue going after al-Qaeda linked groups in Africa

President Barack Obama on Tuesday staunchly defended his decision to order commando raids in Libya and Somalia last weekend, saying the United States would keep targeting al Qaeda-linked groups in Africa but had no intention of going to war there.

Speaking at a news conference, Obama said the United States was justified in seizing a senior al Qaeda figure in Tripoli and whisking him out of the country, and he made clear that it likely would not be the last operation of its kind.

"Where you've got active plots and active networks, we're going to go after them," Obama said. "We're not going to farm out our defense."

Nazih al-Ragye, better known by the cover name Abu Anas al-Libya, is being held aboard a U.S. Navy ship in the Mediterranean Sea where he was questioned by an elite American interrogation team.

Three Republican U.S. senators said on Tuesday that Libya - a suspect in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 civilians - should be brought to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But the Obama administration was not likely to transfer him there.

One U.S. official said Libya might face prosecution in a federal court in New York, where he is under criminal indictment.

Obama said Libya had killed "a whole lot of Americans" and that the U.S. government had strong evidence against him and he would be "brought to justice." But he offered no details on how the case would be handled.

The capture of Libya and a failed attempt by U.S. commandos to capture an Islamist militant in Somalia offered evidence the United States was willing to use ground troops to seize wanted militants in unstable African countries where they operate.
But analysts said it was too early to tell whether such operations might eventually mean a diminished focus on the armed drone strikes central to Obama's counterterrorism policy.