Doubts over bin Laden death

WORLD leaders have reacted cautiously overnight to a French newspaper report that Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has died, while the French government has probed the leak of an intelligence brief cited by the daily.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, when asked before meeting here with Sri Lanka's foreign minister whether she gave the report any credibility, said only: "No comment, and no knowledge."

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the report would be welcome if it turns out to be true.

"It would be a good news, but it's just speculation," Karzai said on Radio-Canada television during a visit in Montreal. "Let's see if it's true or not true."

L'Est Republicain, a French regional newspaper, has overnight published a French foreign intelligence service document, dated September 21, stating that Saudi intelligence officials "are now convinced that Osama bin Laden is dead."

In France, President Jacques Chirac confirmed that the report was based on a confidential French foreign intelligence service (DGSE) briefing and said he would order an investigation of the leak.

But he stressed in remarks to journalists that the information on bin Laden "is in no way confirmed."

"I am a little surprised that a confidential DGSE note should be published," Mr Chirac told a media conference, after concluding a summit in the French city of Compiegne with Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The note quoted by L'Est Republicain said that "information gathered by the Saudis" from a source they considered reliable indicates that bin Laden "might have succumbed to a very serious case of typhoid fever resulting in partial paralysis of his lower limbs while in Pakistan on August 23, 2006.

"His geographic isolation provoked by constant fleeing is believed to have made medical assistance impossible (and) on September 4, 2006, the Saudi security services received preliminary information of his death."

It said the Saudis were "waiting to obtain further details and notably the exact place of burial before officially announcing the news."

The DGSE refused to confirm the report, which L'Est Republicain said had been sent on Thursday to Chirac and other top French officials, and no immediate official reaction was forthcoming from Saudi officials.

Pakistan's interior minister, Aftab Sherpao, also claimed to be in the dark when he said in Islamabad: "No, we do not have any such information with us."

Security officials hunting Al-Qaeda in Pakistan rejected the report.

"There is an excellent cooperation between Pakistani and Saudi intelligence services and no such information has been shared," a senior security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official said it was "inconceivable that an event of this nature would remain unnoticed in Pakistan where we are constantly on the Al-Qaeda hunt."

European officials tracking bin Laden's whereabouts said, also on condition of anonymity, that the report could not be seen as reliable.

Often rumoured to be dead - only to appear later in audio or video recordings - the Al-Qaeda leader was believed to be hiding on the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The last verifiable message from bin Laden was posted on the Internet on July 1, accusing Iraqi Shiites of waging "genocide" against Sunnis. A US official said the message was deemed authentic.

Bin Laden has been held responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington that killed around 3000 people.

Al-Qaeda has been linked to several other attacks, including the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa, a 2000 suicide bomb attack on a US warship off Yemen, and the 2004 Madrid train bombings.

Born in Saudi Arabia to a wealthy family with close ties to the oil-rich state's royal dynasty, bin Laden has been on the run since October 2001, when the United States led an invasion of Afghanistan and expelled the Taliban regime which had been harbouring him.

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