Bin Laden 'alive'

Intelligence reports suggest al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is alive, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf said yesterday.

Mr Musharraf said he did not know where bin Laden was hiding, but that the Saudi-born militant had not perished in US-led military strikes against him since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

"The evidence is interrogation of people that we have apprehended and also technological evidence," Mr Musharraf told reporters during an official visit to the Netherlands.

"We have a lot of intelligence. Intelligence is human intelligence and evidence is technological intelligence and aerial surveillance. All this is combined to produce an intelligence picture," he added.

The al Qaeda leader's whereabouts were unknown, said Mr Musharraf, who survived two assassination attempts last year blamed on al Qaeda.

The US commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan said bin Laden was more likely to be hiding in Pakistan than on Afghan territory.

Lieutenant-General David Barno told Reuters in Kabul no major al Qaeda figure had been caught or killed in Afghanistan since 2002, while Pakistan has arrested or killed dozens of operatives linked to the terror network since March.