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The United States on Monday parried questions on the news reports that some elements in Pakistan's spy agency Inter Services Intelligence were providing shelter to the top Al Qaeda leaders including Osama bin Laden.
"Nothing for you on this story from Kabul," the Pentagon spokesman Lt David Lapan told mediapersons in response to a question on the CNN story which quoted an unnamed NATO official in Afghanistan that Laden is not hiding in the caves, but has been provided a safe shelter by ISI elements at a secure location inside Pakistan.
"Well, there are elements in the ISI that are engaged in things that are not helping (the war against terrorism). What all of those are, we do not know exactly. So I would not deny or express concern over news report saying that bin Laden is being assisted by elements in ISI," Lapan said.
The CNN in its news report from Kabul said quoting a senior NATO official that Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are believed to be hiding close to each other in houses in northwest Pakistan, but are not together.
"Nobody in Al Qaeda is living in a cave," official was quoted as saying by the CNN. Rather, Al Qaeda's top leadership is believed to be living in relative comfort, protected by locals and some members of the Pakistani intelligence services, the official said.
Pakistan has repeatedly denied protecting members of the Qaeda leadership. The official said the region where bin Laden is likely to have moved around in recent years ranges from the mountainous Chitral area in the far northwest near the Chinese border, to the Kurram Valley which neighbours Afghanistan's Tora Bora, one of the Taliban strongholds during the US invasion in 2001.
The Interior Minister of Pakistan Rehman Malik however denied such reports. Malik denied the two men are on Pakistani soil, but said that any information to the contrary should be shared with Pakistani officials so that they can take 'immediate action' to arrest the pair.