Manhunt for bin Laden finding no new leads

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Nearly two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Pakistani troops have begun moving -- gingerly -- into a remote tribal belt where Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida fugitives might be hiding.

But officials say they have no evidence the terrorist mastermind is there, and a brief military foray last week came up empty-handed. Bin Laden, they say, has melted into the mountains.

"It has been a long time since we have heard anything" about his whereabouts, said Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, who as head of the Interior Ministry's crisis unit is in charge of cooperating with the United States in the war on terrorism. "We have received no electronic intercepts or anything to indicate where he is."

Under intense pressure from both the United States and Afghanistan, Pakistani troops have reluctantly moved into several tribal areas in the ultraconservative North West Frontier Province -- including Waziristan and Mohmand, hunting for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters.

The government has historically exercised virtually no control over the areas that border Afghanistan, where ethnic Pashtun tribes have maintained a fierce independence for centuries. Pakistani troops rarely venture off of main roads, part of an agreement worked out with tribal elders.

When Pakistani troops have come, they have not been warmly received.

In Bannu, a tribal city on the edge of Waziristan, a rocket attack late Friday greeted a contingent of Pakistani soldiers that helicoptered into the tiny airport. Residents said the troops left Saturday afternoon, and an Associated Press reporter in the area Sunday found the facility all but deserted.

The three rockets, with a range of about 15 miles, were likely fired from within Waziristan, said Nawaz Khan, a Bannu police official involved in the investigation.

"They were most probably fired from the tribal area," said Khan. The rockets struck empty land at the airport and caused no damage.

Pakistani officials were quick to deny an ABC report Sunday, citing unidentified senior U.S. officials, that the hunt for bin Laden had been narrowed to a 40-square-mile swath of Waziristan.

"Our forces are present along the border, but we have no specific information about bin Laden," Cheema said. "We don't know even if he is in Pakistan."

"The fragrance of the 'flower' is occasionally smelled .... but the flower itself has not been seen in a long time," a Pakistani intelligence officer said, referring to bin Laden. "Nobody knows with certainty where he has gone."

Bruce Kleiner, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, refused to comment.

U.S. and Afghan officials have been calling on Pakistan to use a heavier hand in the tribal regions, saying they are being used by al-Qaida, as well as Taliban holdouts, to launch attacks across the border in Afghanistan. Pakistan has insisted it is doing everything it can.

Bin Laden was last heard from on April 7, exhorting Muslims in a tape obtained by The Associated Press to rise up against Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other governments he claimed were "agents of America."

But fresh television images of the al-Qaida leader have not been seen for more than a year and a half, since just after U.S. troops ousted his Taliban hosts from power in Afghanistan in late 2001.

Three of the most important arrests in the war on terror have been made in Pakistan, the most recent the March 1 capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged organizer of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Shortly after Mohammed's arrest, Pakistani and U.S. forces focused their hunt for bin Laden on a 350-mile corridor in Baluchistan, near where the borders of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran meet. After some optimism, however, the search came up empty.

As the second anniversary of the terrorist strikes nears, frustration has grown within the United States that bin Laden and his top deputies -- including alleged right-hand man Ayman al-Zawahri -- have eluded capture.

Analysts say the two men's survival has been a great boon to their followers.

"As long as bin Laden and al-Zawahri are alive, we will not turn the corner against al-Qaida," said Michael Swetnam, a counterterrorism specialist at the Potomac Institute of Policy Studies in Arlington, Va. "If anything, al-Qaida is more dangerous now."

Associated Press reporter Munir Ahmad in Islamabad contributed to this story.