US troops only 80km from laden

LONDON, Sunday - British and US special forces have surrounded terror suspect Osama bin Laden in an area of 80 square kilometres in southeast Afghanistan, a British newspaper said on Sunday. SAS and US commandos have been dropped by helicopter across the southern approach to the area, near the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, to prevent bin Laden from escaping into Pakistan, according to defence sources, the Sunday Telegraph said. “The plan has always been to deny bin Laden space,” said British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon. “The space he has to operate in is now very limited indeed,” he added. A British defence intelligence source told the paper that bin Laden was believed to be “static” somewhere to the southeast of Kandahar. “For a variety of reasons we can be confident that he has not been able to move far,” the source said. Sunday Times said the troops had been lifted by helicopter to the southern approach to the area, near the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, to prevent bin Laden from escaping. A senior official of the Northern Alliance said bin Laden is hiding 130 kilometres (about 80 miles) east of Kandahar. Younis Qanooni, who is acting interior minister of the victorious Northern Alliance coalition, dismissed Taliban claims that bin Laden was no longer in areas under their control. “The Taliban are trying to cheat the international community so that they will stop the aerial bombardments,” Qanoon said. “According to my information, bin Laden is still in Kandahar province in Maruf, some 130 kilometres east of Kandahar city. “He has training camps there and strong underground bunkers.” Kandahar is the spiritual home of the Taliban in southern Afghanistan and one of their last strongholds after being put on the run by Northern Alliance forces and local warlords. The Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, told reporters at the border on Saturday that bin Laden, believed by the US to have masterminded the September 11 attacks on Washington and New York, was still in Afghanistan. “We do not know where Osama bin Laden is. He is inside Afghanistan somewhere,” Zaeef told reporters at the Chaman border crossing near the Pakistani city of Quetta. Qatar’s Al-Jazeera channel had previously reported that Zaeef had announced bin Laden’s escape from Afghanistan, along with his wives and children, for an undisclosed destination. A journalist with the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press, Kifayatullah Nabi Khail, told Al-Jazeera the news agency was not in a position to confirm or deny that bin Laden had left Afghanistan. The Pentagon said it had “no information” on whether bin Laden had left Afghanistan, which has been the target of US-led strikes since October 7 because of the Taliban’s refusal to hand over bin Laden to Washington. AFP ends