Bin Laden 'may be in Pakistan'

US ambassador Nancy Powell has said there is “a strong possibility” terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan’s remote tribal regions on the border with Afghanistan, it was reported today.

The United States, Pakistan’s spy agency and local police were working closely to track down the al-Qaida leader, one of the world’s most wanted fugitives, she said.

“There is a strong possibility that he (bin Laden) might be hiding somewhere in the tribal areas of the country,” Pakistani English newspaper The Nation quoted her as saying.

Powell made her comments after inaugurating a new “Ladies Reporting Room” at a police station in the capital, Islamabad, yesterday. The room, staffed by women, is designed to encourage more women to report crimes. Many conservative women in Pakistan are reluctant to go to police stations because they try to avoid having contact with men outside their family.

US Embassy officials were not immediately available to confirm Powell’s comments.

Pakistan’s president Pervez Musharraf has also said that bin Laden could be hiding along the mountainous Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Pakistan used to be an ally of Afghanistan’s former Taliban rulers, who provided shelter to bin Laden. But after the September 11 2001 attacks in America, Musharraf withdrew this support and backed the US.-led war on terror which toppled the Taliban government in late 2001.

Powell said “in the war against terrorism and to end the scourge of terror, the US will continue its collaboration with Pakistan”, The Nation reported.

Pakistan’s security agencies have arrested more than 500 Taliban and al-Qaida suspects since they fled the war in Afghanistan after September 11. Many of them were later handed over to the United States.