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Bin Laden may hide in central Asia or Iran: Pakistan
paper
ISLAMABAD, Nov. 25 (Kyodo) - A Pakistani daily suggested Sunday that Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, may take refuge in a central Asian country such as Uzbekistan.
''Afghanistan's puritanical Taliban and their non-Afghan comrades-in-arms held out at Kunduz (northern Afghanistan) to provide safe passage to some top leaders of (bin Laden's) al-Qaida network to disappear into Tajikistan or Uzbekistan,'' the Frontier Post reported, quoting unnamed sources.
''Al-Qaida had prepared a deception plan to mislead the United States that Osama bin Laden...was somewhere in southern Afghanistan,'' it said, adding that bin Laden, in fact, ''had left southern parts of Afghanistan much before the fall of Kabul.''
The Peshawar-based newspaper also said bin Laden has had some contact with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, which may have provided him shelter and helped him cross over to neighboring central Asian countries, it said.
His best chance ''is in ending up in some state where armed resistance movements are already operating and have their own hideouts,'' it said.
''Uzbekistan and Chechnya are such places where he can have better hideouts,'' the paper said, quoting ''an expert of guerrilla warfare.
It also said, ''From the south he can cross over to Iran and hide for a few months there in border areas. And we all know bin Laden is a clever man who plans in advance and must have arranged a hideout within Iran as well.''
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