London, July 30
Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes has said that “unimpeachable sources” had told him that Osama bin Laden, chief suspect of the September 11 attacks in the USA, was still alive.
His claim yesterday that Bin Laden was in Pakistan hiding out with the knowledge of Pakistani intelligence drew a furious denial from Islamabad.
But Fernandes said India had received intelligence three months ago that the Al-Qaida leader was alive in Pakistan and had no reason to believe that the situation had changed since then.
The information had been passed on to the Americans, he added.
“We had information the man is around and he is somewhere in Pakistan. We had it from unimpeachable sources,” he told Britain’s Channel 4 News.
The sources had said that Bin Laden “was moving from place to place and Pakistanis were taking care of him,” Fernandes said.
He said that although Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf would normally be kept informed, the intelligence agency sometimes operated on their own.
“Where exactly this particular issue is between the two of them (the intelligence agency and Musharraf), I won’t be able to say,” he added.
Fernandes’s claims were bitterly denounced by Musharraf’s spokesman, Rashid Qureshi.
“It is typical of Mr George Fernandes to talk through his hat. This is a typical example of Indian propaganda which is meant just to discredit Pakistan,” he told Channel 4 News.
“If there had been any evidence of the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden I am quite confident, and I am sure the world also knows, that the USA would have been the first to know,” he said.
AFP
