Musharraf guesses Bin Laden is in east Afghanistan

Pervez Musharraf

ISLAMABAD - In his autobiography released on Monday, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said his best guess is that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is hiding somewhere in Afghanistan's eastern province of Kunar.

The book's publication comes hard on the heels of a French newspaper report on Saturday that bin Laden was believed to have died of typhoid in Pakistan last month.

Several governments, including Pakistan's, have poured cold water on the newspaper's report.

Musharraf's memoir, written well before the latest flurry of excitement, stuck to a commonly held belief that bin Laden was moving back and forth across the Afghan-Pakistan border.

"The fact that so many Saudis are in the Kunar area perhaps suggests that this is where Osama bin Laden has his hideout, but we cannot be sure," Musharraf wrote in In the Line of Fire, which went on sale at bookshops in Islamabad hours before its official release in New York.

"I have said, half-jokingly, that I hope he is not caught in Pakistan, by Pakistan's troops," he added, alluding to worries about a probable internal backlash by Islamist admirers of bin Laden if he were arrested in Pakistan.

Musharraf also wrote that he thought Taleban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was most likely to be close to his original base in southern Afghanistan, where Nato forces are facing fierce resistance from insurgents.

Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who are due to meet President George W Bush on Tuesday, have been at loggerheads over Afghan accusations that the Taleban leader is running the insurgency from the city of Quetta in southwest Pakistan.

"This insinuation is ridiculous and may even be mischievous," Musharraf wrote. He made only one direct reference to Karzai in the 335-page book, saying Pakistan supported the Afghan president's attempt to bring peace to his country.

Musharraf, who has survived at least two al Qaeda inspired assassination attempts, listed a number of successes in tracking, capturing or killing members of bin Laden's network.

One the most important catches he described was that of a Pakistani computer engineer, whose capture in July 2004 he said led to numerous other arrests and uncovered plans to bomb Heathrow Airport and London's subway system.

Information gathered from this prisoner, who British officials were allowed to see, also revealed links to Siddique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, two of the British-born Muslims who carried out suicide bomb attacks on London's transport system a year later, Musharraf wrote.

- REUTERS