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Date Posted: 08:00:21 12/27/01 Thu
Our Friends, The Pakis :) Wouldyou put it past them?
Bin Laden in Pakistan - Afghan Military Spokesman
By Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) is in hiding in Pakistan under the protection of supporters of a radical Islamic leader who helped to create the fundamentalist Taliban, Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s Defense Ministry spokesman said on Thursday.
``Osama himself is under the protection of Maulana Fazalur Rehman in Pakistan, but we don't know for sure in which part,'' Mohamad Habeel told Reuters.
Habeel represents the Northern Alliance, the main component of the new interim government that has long had poor relations with neighboring Pakistan and is also keen to see bin Laden outside its frontiers.
``He lives in areas which are under the influence and control of Fazalur Rehman supporters. I cannot say from which sources we have received this information,'' he said.
``Bin Laden and his men are no longer here (in Afghanistan),'' he added.
Rehman, head of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam party, who is under house arrest, swiftly dismissed the report as a ``joke.''
``This is not serious. It may be a political gimmick,'' Rehman, a long-time supporter of bin Laden and his protectors, the former Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, told Reuters from his home in the North West Frontier Province town of Dera Ismail Khan.
Bin Laden and his al Qaeda militant network are blamed for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
Rehman, whose party's religious seminaries in Pakistan acted as breeding grounds for the Taliban militia, said the United States should demand that Afghanistan's new interim government hunt down bin Laden after the collapse of Taliban rule.
``Bin Laden has been hiding in Afghanistan, which is now controlled by Karzai and the Northern Alliance, and the United States should ask them to produce bin Laden.''
Habeel said bin Laden's support in Afghanistan had collapsed completely.
``His supporters have no presence... any more. There may be individuals here who have hidden, but altogether we can say that his resistance is over. His last remaining forces have fled to areas along the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan,'' he said.
Habeel said pressure should be put on any country that had given refuge to bin Laden.
``Attack is permissible on any country, be it Pakistan or any other which gives protection to Osama. We support that type of attack,'' he said.
In a videotape apparently recorded by bin Laden possibly earlier this month and aired on Qatar's al Jazeera television on Wednesday, bin Laden said the U.S. air campaign against Afghanistan in pursuit of al Qaeda proved the United States and the West loathed Islam.
But Habeel said the Afghan Defense Ministry saw no link, and condemned his statement.
``This... has no link and justification in terms of Islam. We reject and condemn it,'' he told Reuters.
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