Musharraf says Bin Laden alive

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is still alive and probably holed up somewhere in the remote, mountainous, tribal areas on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, President Pervez Musharraf told Reuters yesterday.

The Pakistan leader, in Malaysia for an Islamic summit, said he didn't know exactly where bin Laden was hiding but the army had for the first time ventured into treacherous border areas and started gathering intelligence from locals there.

"I'm sure he's alive," the Pakistani president said, citing technological intelligence. "I can't say whether he's on our side of the border or the Afghan side."

In a wide ranging interview, the general who took power in a military coup five years ago said he believed Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was "a man of peace".

But Mr Musharraf suspected a stronger more hawkish personality had kept South Asia's two-nuclear armed arch foes from making peace, and said while Pakistan was ready for talks with New Delhi, it was not desperate.

"I know he's a man of peace," he said of Mr Vajpayee, before dropping his voice to add, "But there's somebody who's maybe stronger who opposes peace, that's what I think."

Mr Musharraf spoke of the close cooperation between the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and his own Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) in trying to track down bin Laden, who tops the US most-wanted list, along with Iraq's fugitive former president Saddam Hussein.

He dismissed criticism that Pakistan was not doing enough to catch militants from Afghanistan's vanquished Taliban regime, which his government had supported before al Qaeda's attacks on the United States on September 11 forced a change of thinking.

"If there is a failure of the ISI, there is a failure of the CIA," he said, emphasising how closely the two agencies worked.

He went into detail on the military strategy to tackle seasoned fighters holed up in ideal terrain for guerillas, saying it needed human, technological and aerial intelligence, backed by helicopter gunships to strike quickly.