United States: putting his hand on Ben Laden, Panetta won the 1870 wine

Leon Panetta

AFP - U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta will celebrate the new year by enjoying a bottle of 1870 after winning a bet with a friend who put the challenge to hand over Osama bin Laden, officials said the pentagon.

Ted Balestreri, a restaurateur, had this bet with Mr. Panetta, while he was still director of the CIA, at the last New Year's Eve, they spent together in California. The challenge: a bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1870. Four months later, the wife of Mr. Panetta, Sylvia, called the long-time friend and said, "Ted, you can fetch the corkscrew," she told Ted Balestreri in a local newspaper in California, the Monterey County Herald. The story was confirmed by unnamed sources at the Pentagon.

The leader of al-Qaeda was killed by an American commando in a house in Abbottabad May 2, north of Islamabad.