ISLAMABAD - Pakistan on Sunday denied a US claim that Osama bin Laden is in the country’s tribal areas, saying that if Washington knows the Al Qaeda leader’s whereabouts then it should inform Islamabad.US intelligence chief Mike McConnell told American television on Sunday that he believed bin Laden is alive and sheltering in lawless parts of Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan. “Our stance is that Osama bin Laden is not present in Pakistan,” the country’s Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao told AFP. “If anyone has the information he should give it to us, so that we can
McConnell also blamed the government of President Pervez Musharraf for allowing Al Qaeda to regroup through a controversial peace pact last year in the troubled border region. “My personal view is that he’s alive,” the director of national intelligence said on NBC television when asked about bin Laden. “I believe he is in the tribal region of Pakistan.”
A new report by the US intelligence community last week said that Al Qaeda had regrouped in its Pakistani “safe haven” and was determined to inflict mass casualties through new attacks on the United States. McConnell said that had been made possible by a September peace accord between the Pakistani government and pro-Taleban tribal leaders in the ill-governed region bordering Afghanistan. A week ago, the tribal militants