WASHINGTON: The US said on Tuesday that it is not aware of the whereabouts of top al Qaeda commanders Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, a day after a report claimed that the two fugitives are living in houses in northwest Pakistan under ISI protection.
“I don’t think we know where they are. If we knew where they are I think we’d do something about it,” US Deputy Secretary of Defence William Lynn told the popular US show Charlie Rose in an interview.
Lynn was responding to a CNN report which quoted an unnamed Nato official in Afghanistan that Osama is not hiding in the caves, but has in fact been provided a safe shelter by Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) elements at a secure location inside Pakistan.
“I think it was either an exaggeration in the telling or an exaggeration in the promotion of that. I don’t think we know precisely where bin Laden is, and I don’t think the report’s accurate,” Lynn said, adding that he has not seen the news report.
“Well, there are elements in the ISI that are engaged in things that are not helping [the war against terrorism]. So I would not deny or express concern over news report saying that bin Laden is being assisted by elements in ISI,” Pentagon spokesman David Lapan told reporters.
The CNN in its news report from Kabul quoted a senior Nato official as saying that Osama and Zawahiri are believed to be hiding close to each other in houses in northwest Pakistan. “Nobody in al Qaeda is living in a cave,” said the official.
Also on Tuesday, Pakistan’s ambassador to US Hussain Haqqani termed the media reports “baseless” and “ludicrous”, adding that if the US has evidence of the presence of the al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan then it should be shared with Pakistan.
“Anybody who thinks that Pakistan or any other state for that matter has any interest in protecting bin Laden who has brought nothing but mayhem to the world, is smoking something they shouldn’t be,” he said in conversation with the ABC News.
Haqqani said Nato is just trying to deflect attention from its poor performance in the Afghan war.
“They would say that so that no-one asks them questions about what their own performance is in Afghanistan,” he said.
“But that said, if this was really a serious matter, they wouldn’t be saying it off the record or on background, they would say it publicly,” he added.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 20th, 2010.
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