Tuesday, March 15 2005 14:48 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Islamabad: Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has claimed his country's forces lost track of al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden several months ago.

He said that the Pakistani intelligence services had their strongest indication about his whereabouts 8 to 10 months ago.

"We thought we knew roughly the area where he possibly could be. That was, I think ... not very long (ago), maybe 8 to 10 months back," he said in an interview to BBC.

Musharraf said that the dragnet had been closing on Bin Laden along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but he fled.

Pakistani forces got their clearest trace of Bin Laden after the Pakistani Army launched a big offensive last year, in the tribal belt on the Afghan border.

But since then, he said, the military had seen no sign that the al-Qaeda leader or his associates were in the area.

"They can move and then you lose contact," Musharraf said.

Both Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are widely believed to be hiding in or close to North and South Waziristan - the restive border regions where the Pakistani Army has faced its strongest resistance in its operations against al-Qaeda.

The General said that he was sure his forces had killed Pakistan's most wanted militant, Abdullah Mehsud, in a recent operation, though it was yet to be confirmed.

He claimed that Mehsud's death would reduce resistance to the Army's presence in the tribal area along the Afghan border.