Gordon Brown has told the BBC that Pakistan must do more to “break” al-Qaeda and find Osama Bin Laden.
Eight years after the 2001 attacks on the US, nobody had been able “to spot or detain or get close to” the al-Qaeda leader, the prime minister said.
Pakistan’s security services must join fully in the “major effort” to isolate the terrorist group, he warned.
Mr Brown said progress had been made against the Taliban in south Waziristan by Pakistan’s government.
But he told the BBC: “We’ve got to ask ourselves why, eight years after September the 11th, nobody has been able to spot or detain or get close to Osama bin Laden, nobody’s been able to get close to [Ayman] Zawahiri, the number two in al-Qaeda.
“And we’ve got to ask the Pakistan authorities, security services, army and politicians to join us in the major effort that the world is committing resources to, and that is not only to isolate al-Qaeda, but to break them in Pakistan.”
He said he would be talking to Pakistan’s leaders to say, if the international community is putting so much effort into building up Afghanistan to control its own affairs “then Pakistan has got to be able to show that it can take on al-Qaeda”.
He said the terrorist network posed a “continuing threat”, adding: “I believe that after eight years, we should have been able to do more, with all the Pakistani forces working together with the rest of the world, to get to the bottom of where al-Qaeda is operating from.”
He added that, eight years on, “we want … to see more progress in taking out these two people at the top of al-Qaeda, who have done so much damage and are clearly the brains behind many of the operations aimed at Britain”.
In a separate interview with Sky News, Mr Brown said Britain was prepared to help “rebuild the education system in Pakistan” where, he said, propaganda in madrassas – Islamic schools or colleges – and ordinary schools was “supportive of extremist action”.
But he said other issues concerning education and unemployment made up a climate which “feeds dissent” and the Pakistani authorities had to deal with these.