| Pakistan's Minister for the Interior and Narcotics
Control Makhdoom Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat reveals in BBC's HARDTalk
Pakistan that he is certain that Osama Bin Laden is not hiding in
his country because the Pakistani military has "virtually sealed
the border" with Afghanistan. The episode will be aired tonight
at 10 pm.
Hayat in his conversation on BBC today said that the United States
should not consider itself to have any greater leverage with Pakistan
in its search for the al-Qaeda leader as a result of the recent
scandal over nuclear proliferation.
Questioned by presenter Mahreen Khan on Bin Laden's whereabouts,
Hayat replies, "We do not believe he's in Pakistan, because
if he had been in Pakistan, certainly by now in view of the nature
of the operations, the scale of the operations which have been initiated
and conducted over the past two years, certainly he would have been
apprehended."
He continues, "He's not in Pakistan, certainly not. He could
be somewhere - this is again, this is a matter of conjecture - he
could be somewhere along the border belt, because it's a very long
border as we all know, a 2500 km-long border in which we have the
most inhospitable terrain anywhere in the world."
Asked whether this could actually mean that Bin Laden is hiding
on the Pakistani side of the border, the minister says, "The
reason why I said he could not be in Pakistan is because we have
these 70,000 paramilitary forces patrolling the border. We have
virtually sealed the border. The operations which are going on in
Wana and South Waziristan recently, they are the outcome of an apprehension
that some of the elements connected to the al-Qaeda network's hierarchy
might be hiding in these areas. That is the reason why we are going
ahead with these operations but certainly that doesn't mean that
Osama Bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan."
When questioned about whether he thinks, therefore, that Bin Laden
must be hiding somewhere in Afghanistan, he says, "We believe
that, from the reports which we've had, there is every reason to
believe that he could be there."
Discussing the attack on a religious procession in Quetta in which
more than 40 Shia Muslims were killed, he remarks, "It's not
sectarian; it has been given a sectarian colour. It's not sectarian;
that's not what we believe, that's not what our investigations have
established… we believe it's a terrorist attack. It may have
certain sectarian connotations and certain sectarian backgrounds
but in effect it's a terrorist incident. It is the work of terrorists."
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