WASHINGTON, Jan 14: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has rejected claims by the top US intelligence official that Al Qaeda leaders have secure hideouts in the country.

In an interview taped on Sunday for broadcast on CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer,” the prime minister said that Pakistan was aggressively fighting terrorism and committed to hunting down Al Qaeda elements.

“Any doubts about Pakistan’s commitment to fighting terrorism, we totally reject,” Aziz said.

While presenting the annual review of global threats to a Senate committee on Thursday, National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said leaders of both Al Qaeda and Afghanistan’s former ruling Taliban militia were sheltering in Pakistan’s frontier areas.

Mr Aziz said he had no knowledge of intelligence cited by Mr Negroponte that top Al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, maintain active connections to affiliates in other parts of the world from their safe havens in Pakistan.

“The fact is that nobody knows where they are, nobody knows what they are doing at this stage,” Aziz said.

“Certainly if Pakistan has any knowledge, directly or indirectly that they are in our territory, which we don’t think is the case, we would go after them,” he said.

Mr Aziz said that security problems in the region stemmed from militants infiltrating Pakistan from Afghanistan.

“There is no institutional support from the Pakistan government to provide safe haven to anyone,” he said.

“If some people do creep in they are dealt with according to the law,” he said.

Mr Aziz said that it was possible that elements of the former Afghan Taliban movement might be hiding among Afghan refugees in camps near Quetta and crossing back into Afghanistan.

Mr Aziz said that Pakistan was working to tighten border security and was committed to aiding Afghanistan develop, rejecting claims by Afghan President Hamid Karzai that Pakistan was trying to undermine its neighbour.

“If there is one country that wants a strong, stable and peaceful Afghanistan, it’s Pakistan,” he said.—AP