Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden can not be hiding in tribal lands on the Afghan border as Pakistani forces have combed the area and found no hint of him, a army commander said on Thursday. Bin Laden and his bodyguards could not go undetected in the rugged tribal lands, although pockets of al Qaeda-backed fighters are battling Pakistani forces there, said Lieutenant General Safdar Hussain.
"He requires his own protection and the kind of security apparatus he is supposed to have around would give us a very big signature," Hussain told Reuters in an interview in his well-fortified headquarters in Peshawar.
"There is not an inch of South Waziristan agency or the tribal area which we have not swept time and again and if he was here, I assure you he could not have escaped my ears and eyes."
Hussain said 75,000 government troops had been deployed since March in the semi-autonomous area, which has never been under the full control of Pakistan's government, to root out militants.
He said 202 members of the security forces had been killed while 302 militants, almost 150 of them foreigners, had been killed. More than 600 militants had been arrested, he said.
Only about 70 or 80 militants were left in the area, most followers of Uzbek al Qaeda commander Tahir Yuldashev, Hussain said.
"He is the magnet. He is the unifying force for the foreign fighters," he said. Yuldashev was believed to be moving back and forth between Pakistan and Afghanistan, he said.
"These local militants are working as proxies of Tahir Yuldashev and al Qaeda people in this area. They are being funded by them. They are continuing with their hostile activities."