Peshawar: Osama bin Laden and the vanquished Taleban's spiritual leader Mullah Omar are alive and in Afghanistan, a man claiming to be a former Taleban diplomat told a clandestine press conference on September 27.

"Mullah Omar is alive and is inside Afghanistan. I met him 15 days back," said Naseer Ahmed Roohi, who introduced himself as the former first secretary of the Taleban's Embassy in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

"Omar is also in touch with Osama bin Laden. Osama is neither dead nor has he come to Pakistan," he said.

"He's alive and in contact with Mullah Omar. He's inside Afghanistan, he never crossed the border (into Pakistan)."

Roohi was addressing half a dozen reporters who had been summonsed by telephone to a private office in this North West Pakistani city, 25 km from the Afghan border.

Photographers were forbidden from attending, and journalists were asked not to identify the office.

He was dressed in a blue shalwar kameez (the long tunic and trousers worn by men in Pakistan and Afghanistan), wore the fundamentalist militia's black and white turban, and sported a long beard.

Reporters at the private meeting, who were described as having had close relations with the Taleban, said Roohi was a senior official of the militia, whose five-year rule was crushed in 2001.

Roohi said he now belongs to a pro-Mullah Omar movement called Jamiat ul Shabab ul Muslimeen (party of young mujahideen).

"They are the supporters of Mullah Omar."

He said his group and supporters of fundamentalist former Afghan Premier Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his Hezb-i-Islami organisation were responsible for guerrilla attacks on US-led coalition forces inside Afghanistan.

"We will continue these guerrilla attacks and these will be accelerated in coming days," Roohi said, without elaborating.

He said the assassination attempt against Afghan President Hamid Karzai earlier this month was carried out by Mullah Abdul Rehman.

Rehman was killed by Karzai's US bodyguards after firing at Karzai during a visit to the Southern city of Kandahar.

Roohi said Rehman was the brother of an important Taleban official called Mullah Jalil, who he said was in US custody in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

He said the pro-Mullah Omar organisation had 5,000 followers in Afghanistan.

"We have enough arms. Ammunition the Americans are recovering off and on belongs to us," he said, referring to frequent discoveries of weapons caches by coalition forces hunting Taleban and al-Qaida remnants in Afghanistan.

Muslims from Central Asian countries had offered co-operation and assistance, he said, without naming the countries.