They hunt him here, they hunt him there, but Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf believes there is no need to hunt Osama bin Laden into the rugged lawless tribal fiefdoms on his country's border with Afghanistan.
The Saudi-born fugitive, his trail cold, could well be dead or have fled Afghanistan, Mr Musharraf said in an interview with the Lebanese-based
Middle East Broadcasting Center
that was reproduced in part today in local newspaper
The News
.
Mr Musharraf outlined four possible scenarios to account for the disappearance of the tall, thin, bearded militant accused of masterminding the suicide plane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"The first he may have been killed because of the heavy bombing or he has died of a kidney problem as he was not getting his dialysis machine in the caves," Mr Musharraf was quoted as saying.
In his latest video broadcast last month, bin Laden appeared frail and pale and barely moved his left side. He is known to have been receiving treatment from a portable dialysis machine.
US heavy bombers have pounded the mountain cave complexes said to have housed bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, but the trail leading to the world's most wanted man has gone cold.
Mr Musharraf said he thought it unlikely that the gray-bearded fugitive could be hiding in a populated area while there is a $25 million bounty on his head.
"He might be hiding in the mountains," Mr Musharraf said. "If he was in the city, someone might have disclosed his whereabouts.
"The third possibility is that he might have gone out of Afghanistan to some unknown place," Mr Musharraf added.
The United States has said it has no idea where bin Laden is, but has said he is still thought to be hiding out among the remote steep-sided mountains and narrow valleys of Afghanistan where he moved in 1996 to establish training camps for his al-Qaeda fighters.
Mr Musharraf did not rule out that bin Laden might have slipped into Pakistan.
"But the chances are rare," he said.