June 24, 2002	Monday	Rabi-us-Sani 12, 1423

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WASHINGTON, June 23: The head of the US Senate intelligence committee on Sunday said Washington believes Osama bin Laden is hiding out in Pakistan, hours after an Al Qaeda spokesman said Osama is alive and warned the United States to “fasten its seat belt” for more attacks.

“Our best intelligence estimate continues to be that he is alive and probably someplace in those tribal areas on the western side of Pakistan,” Senator Bob Graham told Fox television.

Earlier on Sunday, Suleiman Abu Ghaith — a spokesman for Osama’s Al Qaeda told Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television that Osama and his network were alive and well and that “America must prepare itself and fasten its seat belt.”

Reacting to the news, Graham, a Florida Democrat, said that “what we have seen is a disturbing pattern of the reformulation of Al Qaeda and their renewed willingness and capability to conduct terrorist attacks.”

He pointed particularly to the April 11 attack on a synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia.

“The attack against a Jewish synagogue in Tunisia has now been linked to Al Qaeda. The fact that there was a propane truck used in the destruction of the synagogue in Tunisia sent a signal that this was a new form of terrorist attack which Al Qaeda had perfected,” Graham said. —AFP