Pakistan 'has no information' on bin Laden's whereabouts

Pakistan has no information on where al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden could be hiding, a Cabinet minister said today.

Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao also said Pakistan’s efforts to fight terrorism were not only focused on trapping bin Laden.

“It is not to arrest one particular person, but to curb terrorism in all its forms and manifestations,” Sherpao said in Islamabad.

“We have no information on his (bin Laden’s) whereabouts,” he said. Asked whether the United States’ most wanted man could be hiding along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Sherpao said that he could not speculate “unless we get credible information” on his presence there.

Yesterday, the Arabic language television station Al-Jazeera broadcast a new audiotape purportedly from bin Laden.

In the tape, bin Laden issued new threats and accused the United States and Europe of supporting a “Zionist” war on Islam by cutting off funds to the Hamas-led Palestinian government.

Bin Laden also urged followers to go to Sudan, his former base, to fight a proposed UN peacekeeping force.

Bin Laden and his top deputy Ayman al-Zawahri have been thought to be hiding along the rugged Afghanistan-Pakistan border since fleeing Afghanistan in late 2001 when a US-led military campaign ousted the Taliban regime that had granted them sanctuary there.