November 6, 2002	Wednesday	Sha’aban 30,1423

MAINZ (Germany) Nov 5: Germany’s top intelligence official has told the second television network ZDF that Osama bin Laden is still alive and that Al Qaeda may soon try to carry out another major attack.

ZDF, in a preview of a programme to be aired later on Tuesday, cited August Hanning, president of the German intelligence agency BND, as saying that Germany itself faces a “higher danger” from a possible Al Qaeda attack.

“Osama bin Laden is not only alive, but he is also operating,” Hanning said in the ZDF programme “Frontal 21” to be aired in the evening.

The Al Qaeda leader and his deputies were believed to be in moving about in the remote and difficult terrain of the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“He has many helpers. He is operating in regions which are very difficult to reach,” Hanning said about Osama. “He also changes the places where he stays, making it very difficult to determine his situation and position.”

It was now believed that Osama was organising guerrilla war in Afghanistan and that there are indications that there will possibly be attacks on western ISAF forces in the country.

While western intelligence security did not believe that Al Qaeda was capable of “using nuclear weapons”, it could “not be excluded that they have developed so-called ‘dirty bombs’,” Hanning said, referring to devices triggering high radioactive contamination.—dpa