Bin Laden keeps US guessing

29 Dec, 2001 01:52 AM4 mins to read

KABUL - Afghanistan says Osama bin Laden has escaped to neighbouring Pakistan, but the head of a radical Islamic group said to be sheltering the world's most wanted man denies the claim.

In other chilling signs that bin Laden and al Qaeda are not yet a spent force, bin Laden vowed the United States would be destroyed even if he was killed and the commander of US forces in Afghanistan was reported to be the subject of an assassination attempt.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld did not rule out that bin Laden, chief suspect in the September 11 attacks on the US, had fled Afghanistan, but said he had stopped chasing reports of his whereabouts.

"We hear six, seven, eight, 10, 12 conflicting reports every day. I've stopped chasing them," Rumsfeld said. "We do know of certain knowledge he is either in Afghanistan or some other country or dead and we know of certain knowledge that we don't know which of those happens to be the case."

The Afghan Defence Ministry said bin Laden had slipped into Pakistan and was being protected by followers of Islamic radical leader Maulana Fazalur Rehman, who helped to create the Taleban, which had given sanctuary to bin Laden.

"Bin Laden and his men are no longer here," said ministry spokesman Mohamad Habeel, who would not reveal his sources and said he did not know where in Pakistan bin Laden was.

But Rehman, under house arrest in northwest Pakistan, denied the report, calling it a "political gimmick".

In a telling comment on how elusive bin Laden has been, a senior US defence official revealed that since the attacks on Afghanistan started in October, US forces had never come close enough to finding the Saudi-born radical to attack his location.

The United States never had information on bin Laden's whereabouts that could be acted on immediately.

"If there had been, we would have got him," said the official, who asked not to be named.

Pakistan has sent troops and paramilitaries to its 2400km Afghan border and has arrested hundreds of bin Laden supporters trying to cross. It has handed 20 of them back to US Marines in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said.

In a videotape released by Qatar's al Jazeera television station this week, bin Laden told the US it would soon collapse, whether he lived or died, as Muslims around the world had awakened to its tyranny.

The channel said bin Laden's videotape was mailed from Pakistan but had lain unopened on a desk for two days before someone noticed it.

It did not say how it got the tape or when or where it had been shot, though the channel's newsreader said it could have been recorded in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, as bin Laden was swallowing constantly. Muslims refrain from eating and drinking from dawn to dusk during Ramadan, which ended on December 15.

In another development, NBC Nightly News reported that a shoulder-launched, anti-aircraft missile was fired at a group of four helicopters ferrying the commander of the US campaign, General Tommy Franks, to the inauguration of new Afghan leader Hamid Karzai last Sunday.

Quoting military sources, the network said Franks' helicopter had been forced to take evasive action but that the missile "was several hundred feet off target".

Neither the Pentagon nor US Central Command would comment.

And US planes destroyed a compound believed to be used by Taleban leaders near Ghazni, southwest of Kabul, the Pentagon said. At least two B-52 bombers and one AC-130 gunship destroyed the complex.

Air Force General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there were "very good indications the compound was inhabited by Taleban leadership".

He was unaware of reports from the area that up to 40 villagers had been killed in a US night bombing raid.

Myers also defended a controversial raid last Friday on a convoy in Paktia province. Tribal leaders have said the convoy was made up of supporters of the new interim Government on their way to Kabul to attend a swearing-in ceremony.

"We have nothing to indicate anything other than what we said before, in that, that convoy was leadership involved in this war on terrorism."

- REUTERS

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