Premji among greatest entrepreneurs of all time

Nasdaq-listed Wipro Ltd [Get Quote] on Wednesday said its chairman Azim Premji has been named among the 'greatest entrepreneurs' of all time by BusinessWeek, sharing the credit with the likes of Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and Michael Dell.

Premji, the only Indian to make it to the list, has been recognised for his vision and leadership that has been responsible for Wipro emerging as one of the world's fastest growing companies, a company statement said.

The list honours the ideas and innovation of the world's 30 most influential people and includes 15th century explorer Admiral Zheng H to present day leaders like Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs and Michael Dell to name a few.

Azim Premji was highlighted for his success in turning a $3-million vegetable oil company to a global leader in IT services based on a foundation of values and consistently delivering premium quality to customers, it said.

Premji has been the chairman of Wipro Ltd from 1966 when he took over the company after his return from Stanford. He founded the Azim Premji foundation in the year 2001, with an aim to make tangible impact on identified social issues through education.

The Foundation is working with 15 state governments and is engaged with 20,000 government-run schools reaching about 2.5 million children.

The US magazine BusinessWeek 'Top 30 All Time Entrepreneurs' list is compiled based on opinions from professors, authors and other BusinessWeek staffers.

The criteria looks at people who had the vision to create new markets or tap into underserved markets, changing the way people lived in the process.

Al Qaeda entrenched in Pak, Osama protected by tribals: US

Al Qaeda [Images] is becoming increasingly active in the ungoverned tribal areas of Pakistan but the US fears a military strike could spawn new militant activity across the country, top American intelligence officials said.

Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, officials from the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defence Intelligence Agency said al Qaeda has become entrenched in a remote corner of Pakistan near the Afghan border, with Osama bin Laden himself believed to be protected by local tribal leaders.

"They (Qaeda) seem to be fairly well settled into the safe haven in the ungoverned spaces of Pakistan. We see more training. We see more money. We see more communications," said John Kringen, the CIA's director of intelligence.

But revealing the dilemma in trying to deal with the problem, Thomas Fingar, Deputy Director at the Directorate of National Intelligence said, "There is the risk of taking actions... that could lead to developments in all of Pakistan, that would increase the problem."

"There are an awful lot of potential recruits that are being engaged in the struggle in Kashmir that are held in check by the security forces in the rest of Pakistan. So it is not too great an exaggeration to say there is some risk of turning a problem in northwest Pakistan into the problem of all of Pakistan," he said.

Kringen said bin Laden was thought to be alive in the remote tribal areas of Pakistan.

"We continue to assess that Osama bin Laden is alive. We continue to assess that he's probably in the tribal areas of Pakistan," he said adding it was a challenging task to go after him because the Pakistani government does not control much of the area.

But "sooner or later you have to quit permitting them to have a safe haven there. At the end of the day, when we have had success, it's when you've been able to get them worried about who was informing on them, get them worried about who was coming after them," Kringen said.

The officials also said the peace deal with tribal leaders in Waziristan has not proved successful in combating extremism and fighting terrorists.

"We would agree that the peace deal in Waziristan has not been helpful in terms of the anti-terrorist effort.

Musharraf's rationale for that was that in the long run it would create the political space to create a more stable environment. From our assessment, we have not seen the developments go in that direction, but actually in a negative direction," Fingar said.