ISLAMABAD, 6 July 2005 — Pakistan believes Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden is hiding in southern Afghanistan, where the Taleban have stepped up attacks, Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Sherpao said in an interview published yesterday.
Bin Laden, his deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri and fugitive Taleban leader Mulla Mohammad Omar might be in the area since it is “not under effective control of Afghan government,” Sherpao told the official Associated Press of Pakistan.
“The possibility of Mulla Omar, Osama Bin Laden and his close aide Ayman Al-Zawahiri hiding in that area cannot be ruled out,” the minister told the news agency.
Sherpao denied that Bin Laden, who has a 25-million-dollar US bounty on his head after masterminding the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, was on the Pakistani side of the rugged terrain near the Afghan border.
US and Afghan officials have long said they think Bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda kingpins have been hiding out in the mountains on the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan since the Taleban were toppled in late 2001.
Islamabad and Kabul have recently traded accusations about whose side of the border the militants are hiding, and who is to blame for failing to find them.
Former US Ambassador to Kabul Zalmay Khalilzad last month said that Bin Laden was not in Afghanistan, while both he and the Afghan government accused Pakistan of not doing enough to tackle Taleban rebels operating from its side.
But Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf dismissed as “speculation” claims by senior US officials that they know where the Al-Qaeda leader is hiding.
Islamabad, a key ally in the US-led “war on terror”, also stresses that it has deployed tens of thousands of troops in the lawless tribal regions along the Afghan border.
