A Taliban official said Saturday that Osama bin Laden has fled Afghanistan. Later, he backed off the claim, saying he didn't know where bin Laden was.
The claim by Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban envoy to Pakistan, could not be independently confirmed. The United States was skeptical, saying the report could be a Taliban attempt to throw off the hunt for bin Laden, who is accused in the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States.
``Osama has left Afghanistan with his children and his wives, and we have no idea where he has gone,'' Zaeef told reporters at the Chaman border crossing as he returned from Afghanistan to Pakistan.
Zaeef gave a different version to local reporters, saying bin Laden had left the rapidly shrinking portion of Afghanistan still under Taliban control. He also told the Arabic television station Al-Jazeera and the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press that he did not know bin Laden's whereabouts.
Pentagon spokesman Glenn Flood said the US military had no evidence bin Laden left Afghanistan and that the claim could be a ruse to protect the leader of the al-Qaida terror network.
``Our search continues,'' Flood said Saturday.
In the early days of the confrontation with the United States over bin Laden, the Taliban variously claimed that they did not know his whereabouts, then that they were in contact with him but not controlling his movements.
Another senior Taliban official - Mullah Najibullah, a Taliban leader in the southeast Afghan border town of Spinboldak - said earlier Saturday that bin Laden was alive, but said nothing more about his status.
As US troops scout a crumbling Afghanistan for bin Laden, experts have said the few places he could try to flee to include Iraq, Somalia and the disputed land of Kashmir, fought over by India and Pakistan.
Perhaps bin Laden's best option would be to try to cross the Afghan-Pakistan border. Long and porous, the frontier is jammed with refugees, and Pakistan is home to militant groups sympathetic to bin Laden and his Taliban allies.
But the terrain, especially in the north, is often treacherous and at this time of year, the temperature can drop below freezing. Once over the border, bin Laden would still have to traverse Pakistan, a key US ally in the war against him.
(China Daily November 18,2001)
