ISLAMABAD/MUSCAT, 16 June 2005 — Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden and Taleban leader Mulla Mohammad Omar are both alive and in good health after more than three years on the run, a senior Taleban commander said in an interview broadcast yesterday.

News that Bin Laden is alive and not yet captured came from a senior US military official yesterday, who dismissed ‘conspiracy theories’ that Bin Laden was deliberately being kept at large to serve a grand Washington design.

“Trust me, if we had the ability, the Al-Qaeda chief would have been behind the bars by now’, Vice Adm. David C. Nichols Jr., commander of the US Naval Forces Central Command, told Arab News in Muscat.

In Islamabad Mulla Akhtar Usmani said, when asked about Bin Laden’s fate in the interview broadcast by Pakistan’s private GEO television, “He is absolutely fine, praise be to Allah. There is no problem, but I will not tell where he is.”

One-eyed Taleban supremo Mulla Omar remained in command of the hard-line militia that formerly ruled Afghanistan, added Usmani. Taleban have launched a fresh onslaught in recent months against the US-led forces who ousted them in late 2001. The commander, said to be Omar’s former deputy and now the head of Taleban operations, held a Kalashnikov assault rifle and partly covered his face with a black turban during the interview. Omar was “alive and healthy and there is no trouble,” Usmani said, adding: “He is still our commander and issuing directions.”

“I would not tell whether or not I have met him, but I listen to his voice. He gives us directions,” he said.

Taleban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi confirmed that Usmani was close to the militia’s leader and that he had given the interview. “We confirm and support the details of what he said,” he told AFP.

Bin Laden and other wanted Taleban and Al-Qaeda leaders are thought to be hiding in the rugged tribal areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

His health has been the subject of speculation amid reports that he was suffering from kidney disease. However, in a video aired late last year before the US presidential election he appeared to be in good condition. Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf said Tuesday during a visit to Australia that Bin Laden was alive, while Zalmay Khalilzad, the outgoing US ambassador to Kabul, said he was disappointed Bin Laden had not been captured.