Bin Laden alive - Taliban
2006-09-26 17:36
Dubai - Dubai-based Al Arabiya television
on Tuesday quoted a Taliban official as saying al-Qaeda leader
Osama bin Laden was alive and in good health.
The Arabic channel said its Pakistan bureau had received a
call from the unnamed official of the ousted Afghan movement a
few days after a leaked French secret document said Saudi
intelligence believed bin Laden died last month in Pakistan.
"The official said bin Laden was alive and that reports that
he is ill are not true," said Bakr Atyani, Al Arabiya's
Islamabad correspondent.
"The Taliban checked with members who
are close to al-Qaeda that these reports are baseless."
Hiding
Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri are believed to be
hiding in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Bin Laden was last seen in a video statement aired to
coincide with the November 2004 US presidential elections.
A report in French regional daily L'Est Republicain last
week quoted a document from the DGSE foreign intelligence
service, saying the Saudi secret services were convinced bin
Laden had died of typhoid.
US
A US intelligence official, who spoke on condition of
anonymity, said Washington believed bin Laden was still alive, but
added that there was no reason to view the Al Arabiya report as
any more credible than the French newspaper account of his
possible death.
"We don't have anything that would lend credence, quite
frankly, to either story ... Our assessment is that he's still
alive," he said.
Saudi Arabia said on Sunday it had no evidence that bin
Laden was dead.
French foreign minister Philippe Douste-Blazy
said that as far as he knew, the Saudi-born militant was alive.
Bin Laden has issued several audio messages in the past two
years, the last one in July 2006 in which he vowed al-Qaeda
would fight the United States anywhere in the world.
- Reuters