ISLAMABAD, Dec 16: The caves of Tora Bora have turned into another dead end in the desperate hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Branded as evil by Western leaders, the head of Al-Qaeda has proved devilishly elusive.

Up to Sunday US defence officials had said they believed the Saudi, who has a 25 million dollar price on his head, could still be around Tora Bora mountain, in eastern Afghanistan.

Now it is back to the drawing board.

Afghan commander Haji Mohammad Zaman, the military chief in Nangarhar province which includes Tora Bora, admitted that “he (Osama) is not there” as he proclaimed victory over Al-Qaeda in the cave war.

Even before the apparently final battles on the mountain, those who have had contact with Osama in recent weeks said they were certain he has left the warren of caves and tunnels.

“My information is that he is not in Tora Bora. But I don’t know whether he is in Pakistan or in the southern part of Afghanistan,” said Hamid Mir, editor of Ausaf and the last known journalist to interview Osama.

Mir’s newspaper reported at the weekend that Osama had slipped through the tight siege of US and Afghan forces around Tora Bora, close to the Pakistan border.

It said Osama could have taken refuge with a tribe in Paktia province, just south of Tora Bora.

On Friday the Afghan Islamic Press, which has strong contacts with the Taliban, said that Osama bin Laden was no longer in Tora Bora.

The agency said Osama left the cave hideout on Nov 25 or 26 for an unknown base.

US military officials said Osama’s escape routes were being closed down. Special forces troops searching the caves had monitored Osama’s voice giving orders via shortwave radio, according to US newspaper reports which were not confirmed by the Defence Department.

But top US officials from Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, General Tommy Franks, have admitted: nobody really knows where Osama is.

“We think he is there (around Tora Bora). We don’t know if he is there and when we find him we will announce it,” Rumsfeld said at a press conference in Washington before leaving on a Central Asia tour.

But what is certain is that Osama has become even more wanted since the release of a video by the US authorities last week.

US President George W. Bush said the video was proof that Osama is “an incredibly evil man”.

He added: “I don’t know whether we’re going to get him tomorrow or a month from now or a year from now. He may hide for a while, but we’ll get him.”

Western observers in Pakistan and Afghanistan say the chances of finding Osama alive are slim.

“If he can get away from those caves, there are enough Osama supporters in Afghanistan and other countries for him to always find a refuge somewhere,” said one diplomat in Islamabad.

And Osama has also told associates he would prefer death to capture. He has on numerous occasions been quoted as saying: “My cause will continue after my death.”

videotape: A dissident Saudi religious leader on Sunday described a video tape of Osama bin Laden and released by the United States as a fake and said Washington had no case against him.

Sheikh Hamoud bin Ogla al-Shuaibi, who has angered Saudi officials with edicts denouncing Muslims who back US military strikes on Afghanistan, said his followers had analysed the tape released by the Pentagon on Thursday and found it to be fake.

“This is a dubbed tape and is not real at all,” Shuaibi said.

“If they had evidence against bin Laden, they wouldn’t have come up with this miserable proof which, if anything, shows how silly they are,” he added.

Ordinary Arabs have accused the United States of falsifying the tape. But a few Arab officials and analysts who commented on the video have accepted it as damning evidence of Osama’s responsibility for the attacks on Washington and New York.

The Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz, said the tape “displays the cruel and inhumane face of a murderous criminal who has no respect for the sanctity of human life”.

In the amateur video tape, Osama was shown saying that he was the most optimistic of his colleagues about the damage that would be done to the World Trade Center.

Another man seen with Osama in the tape was identified by the United States as Sheikh Sulaiman of Saudi origin. US officials have said they had no information about him.

But the Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper on Sunday identified the man as Khaled Odeh Mohammed al-Harbi.

It quoted reliable sources as saying Harbi was an Afghan war veteran who had also fought and been injured in Bosnia.—Reuters/AFP