Bin Laden rumours multiply

Maybe he is dead, either from US bombing, gunfire from his own men or even, as one newspaper reported, from cancer. Maybe he is holed up deep in a mountain cave or hiding in a fortified Pakistan border village. Or perhaps he is in Chechnya, Somalia or back home in Saudi Arabia.

Rumours multiply and divide under normal circumstances, and the involvement of the world’s most-wanted fugitive makes them even more ripe for the picking. So it is understandable that the debate over Osama bin Laden’s fate has come to resemble the geopolitical equivalent of Elvis sightings.

‘‘I don’t know where he is,’’ Afghanistan’s new prime minister, Hamid Karzai, said today in Kabul.

‘‘We receive reports now and then that he may be here or there.’’

These days, Karzai’s is about the most restrained answer you will get. Rare is the person or organisation unwilling to speculate about the man who seems to have vanished into the mountain mists.

Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf said in China a few days ago that he was ‘‘reasonably sure’’ bin Laden was dead, killed by American bombardments in one of the network of caves at Tora Bora.

‘‘There is a great possibility that he may have lost his life there,’’ Musharraf said. He did not elaborate.

And from others come myriad theories, few substantiated by anything but repetition:

:: That bin Laden had his own men shoot him and martyr him as American forces closed in. A Karachi newspaper, among others, offered that account last week, quoting Afghans recently arrived from Kandahar.

:: That he managed to make it to Chechnya, Somalia or even his native Saudi Arabia, where sympathetic forces are safeguarding him. Some of those rumours, circulating for weeks, put him on the run with his close ally, deposed Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

:: That he died of natural causes. The Daily Dopahr, a small Islamabad newspaper, offered that astonishing theory today. ‘‘Osama has died,’’ it said, attributing the demise to ‘‘kidney and stomach cancer’’. Citing no sources, it said he died in the mountains of Tora Bora and was buried there by 30 trusted advisers and bodyguards.

‘‘Now he cannot be arrested,’’ the newspaper said, rather obviously.

In Jalalabad, Afghanistan, regional anti-Taliban commanders are convinced bin Laden fled the Tora Bora cave complex near the border with Pakistan. But they admit their theories are just that speculation.

Al-Qaida prisoners and anti-Taliban intelligence officers have said bin Laden was hiding among the caves in eastern Afghanistan’s White Mountains as recently as December 4, two days after the siege of Tora Bora began. Other reports around that time later called into question said two-way radio traffic referred to ‘‘the sheik’’ being safe in Tora Bora.

Many eastern commanders think bin Laden sneaked across the snow-packed mountains to escape their attack and is now hiding in Pakistan. Rumours range from vague sightings in remote villages to detailed accounts of him joining Pakistani nomads and riding south toward the sea.

US forces have not given up the hunt. Though Kenton Keith, a spokesman for American forces in Afghanistan, said it was ‘‘quite possible’’ that bin Laden was dead, US President George Bush said the leader of al Qaida would be found even if he ‘‘tried to slither out’’.

‘‘I don’t know where he is,’’ Bush said over the weekend. ‘‘But I can tell you this we’re going to find him.’’

General Tommy Franks, head of US forces in Afghanistan, agreed, saying forces will sift through rubble and rumour until they get their man.

‘‘(We will) go through each of these areas until we satisfy ourselves that he is there and dead,’’ Gen Franks said. ‘‘We’ll find out about it.’’