French genereal: Bin Laden was within reach

US led forces in Afghanistan have had Osama bin Laden “within reach” on at least two occasions, but were unable to prevent him slipping away, France’s top general said today.

General Henri Bentegeat, the French chief of staff, said the al-Qaida leader had evaded capture several times since 2002, but not recently.

He did not say where bin Laden had been tracked down, and refused to comment on whether French special forces operating in southern Afghanistan were involved.

“Several times the coalition has had Osama bin Laden directly within reach,” Bentegeat said in Kabul, the Afghan capital. “But between locating a person and arresting them there is a gap tied to all the uncertainties of all operations of this kind.”

Bentegeat said several of bin Laden’s top lieutenants also evaded capture. “At least two times they managed to escape,” he said. “That’s absolutely inevitable, normal in the conditions in which these kind of operations are carried out.

“I’m not saying there was an incident of this kind recently,” he added. “To my knowledge, that’s not the case.”