* Al Qaeda seen aiding Afghan insurgents on many levels
* Too early to say if bin Laden's death impacts Taliban
* "No decision" yet on first phase of U.S. troop withdrawal (Adds NATO soldiers die in bomb blast, paragraph 13)
By Jonathon Burch
KABUL, May 16 (Reuters) - Fewer than 100 al Qaeda members remain inside Afghanistan, but they form a core group providing the Afghan Taliban with resources and technical battlefield skills, the second most senior U.S. commander in the country said on Monday.
U.S. Lieutenant General David Rodriguez also said it was too early to say if the death of Osama bin Laden had had an impact on the Taliban or would affect a gradual U.S. troop drawdown due to begin in July.
"We still think that there are just less than a hundred al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan," Rodriguez, commander of day-to-day operations for the 150,000-strong NATO-led force in Afghanistan, told reporters in Kabul.
"But what they do is a cadre-type organisation that helps out to bring both resources as well as technical skills to the rest of the Taliban fighting here," he said.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai and senior Afghan officials have said the killing of bin Laden in a U.S. raid in neighbouring Pakistan earlier this month showed the war against terrorism was outside Afghanistan and "not in Afghan villages".
Analysts have also questioned the extent of the relationship between al Qaeda and Taliban-led insurgents in Afghanistan, saying ties were already strained before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States planned by bin Laden.
The Taliban, who once sheltered bin Laden, were also slow to react to his death, unlike other Islamist groups around the world who called for revenge, a sign many analysts said was an attempt to distance themselves from al Qaeda.
Rodriguez said al Qaeda worked with different insurgent groups in Afghanistan on "multiple levels" to increase their effectiveness, but it was still too early to tell whether bin Laden's death would affect the Taliban.
"There's been a bunch of chatter here and there but no effects that we can see at this point. I think it's too early to see that but we're continuing to watch that carefully over time," he said.
"NO DECISION" ON TROOP WITHDRAWAL
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said the killing of bin Laden could be a "game changer" in the Afghan war and U.S. lawmakers have called for a speedier withdrawal of U.S. troops after the al Qaeda's leader's death.
A gradual handover of security responsibilities to the Afghan army and police is due to start this summer, and be completed by the end of 2014 when the last foreign troops leave.
Violence is at the highest levels since the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban government, despite the presence of 150,000 foreign troops in the country and an aggressive campaign to push insurgents out of strongholds like southern Kandahar.
A homemade bomb killed four soldiers of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in southern Afghanistan on Monday, ISAF said, but gave no further details.
Washington has said it will start withdrawing its roughly 100,000 troops from Afghanistan in July and aims to have pulled them all out by end 2014.
Rodriguez said bin Laden's death had not changed the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan and no decision had been made yet regarding the scope of the troop drawdown.
"The al Qaeda movement is not just based on one individual. We're just going to have to see ... how much impact that will have on the strength on al Qaeda and its associated movements, but that's yet to be seen," he said.
Asked if bin Laden's death should have an effect on the speed of the U.S. troop withdrawal, Rodriguez said "We are going to see how it goes but there has been no decision on that yet." (Reporting by Jonathon Burch; editing by Paul Tait and Tim Pearce)
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