Osama probably hiding in Pak: Karzai

WASHINGTON: Three days ahead of the trilateral summit with United States President George W Bush and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, Afghan leader Hamid Karzai has said Al Qaeda leader Osama bin  Laden is "probably" in Pakistan and he can be captured if "collectively tried".

 

"He (Osama) is not in Afghanistan. I can tell you that for sure," Karzai said during NBC's Meet the Press programme.

 

When asked if he is in Pakistan, the Afghan leader replied, "Probably he is there. That's what the reports say now that come across".

 

On a report of the Rand Corporation, privately endorsed by official circles, that accused the Pakistani government and forces of being in collusion with the Taliban, he said, "We have a serious problem in this regard.

 

"When I said we must go to the sources of terrorism, where they are trained, where they are equipped, where they are given money, where they are given motivation and sent to kill international coalition forces, engineers, doctors, Afghans, that's what I meant."

 

Pressed on whether he is talking about Pakistan, he said, "whatever the source is".

 

He also made the point that Kabul will be happy if Musharraf's deal with the tribal chiefs is implemented.

 

"...if that is implemented, we will be very  happy. But unfortunately, right after the signing of the agreement, we saw that two tribal chiefs in Pakistan were killed in that area by the terrorists, by the Taliban, and an Afghan governor in the neighbourhood of that area of that was killed by a suicide bomber. So the trend since then is not good. But we will have to wait and see as to whether the truce, as it is agreed upon, will be implemented or will be violated," Karzai said.

 

"If it is violated, then we will be very skeptical and that will exactly be a sanctuary for terrorism in that part of Pakistan," Karzai added.

 

He maintained that Afghanistan had provided the location to Islamabad of Osama bin Laden and argued that if "all" cooperate the Qaeda chief could be nabbed.

 

"We have provided, from time to time, for the past so many years, information to our friends, our brothers, our neighbors in Pakistan about sanctuaries, about training grounds, about personalities associated with terrorism. They came back to us and said that some of the information was old, but that it was true sometime before that and that we hope that more action will be taken" the Afghan leader said.

 

On whether Pakistan can capture bin Laden the Afghanistran leader remarked, "I don't have so much information to speculate on that. But if you all tried to collectively, he would not be able to hide".

 

Ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Jane Harman said the Bush administration failed to nab bin Laden after cornering him at Tora Bora and that there is now a fair degree of certainty that he is in Pakistan.

 

"We missed a chance. We had him cornered at Tora Bora in Afghanistan. And under this administration, no action was taken. We also know, I think for a fair certainty he's in the tribal area of Pakistan. I don't believe he's in Afghanistan. Resources were not focused on this problem as we got bogged down in Iraq. Now we have more resources on the problem. But we should have been able to capture him within the last five years" Harman said on CNN's Late Edition.