Pakistan dismisses US contention of progress in bin Laden hunt
Islamabad says it does not know his whereabouts
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistani officials dismissed a top US counterterrorism official's contention of progress in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, saying yesterday that Pakistan does not have any information on the Al Qaeda leader's whereabouts.
The top government spokesman, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, said the recent comments about bin Laden by Joseph Cofer Black, the US State Department coordinator for counterterrorism, were a "political statement."
"We don't have any information about bin Laden," Ahmed said.
A senior Pakistani security official who attended meetings with Black and other US officials last week in Islamabad said Black did not share information "about any possible hide-outs of Osama."
"We cannot say that we are close to capturing him," the official said on the condition of anonymity.
Black told the private Geo network in an interview broadcast Saturday that if bin Laden "has a watch, he should be looking at it because the clock is ticking. He will be caught."
Asked whether concrete progress had been made during the past two months in capturing the world's most-wanted fugitive, Black said, "Yes, I would say this."
Black said he could not predict exactly when bin Laden and other top Al Qaeda fugitives would be captured.
"What I tell people, I would be surprised but not necessarily shocked if we wake up tomorrow and he's been caught along with all his lieutenants. That can happen because of the programs and infrastructure in place," he told Geo.
Ahmed said Black "may have this information, but we do not have any such thing." Although he described Black's comments as a "political statement," he said he was not implying that Black's comments were connected to November's US presidential elections.
Pakistan is a chief battleground in the US-led war on terrorism. Bin Laden and his chief associate, Ayman al-Zawahri, are believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.
Islamabad has deployed about 70,000 troops along that border to hunt Al Qaeda holdouts sheltering on Pakistani soil and to order military offensives in areas where officials say foreign militants set up terrorist training camps.
Authorities also have made a series of high-profile terror arrests in Pakistani cities. The prisoners include Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, an alleged Al Qaeda computer specialist, and Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian suspect in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in east Africa that killed 224 people.
