ISLAMABAD, Dec 14: Inter Services Public Relations spokesman Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan has said that a report saying that the CIA had set up secret bases in Pakistan to search out Osama bin Laden is absolutely baseless.

"No bases of such kind were set up in the tribal areas nor at any other places in the country," the ISPR director-general told BBC radio. Pakistan had announced many times that nearly a dozen of US officials were present here to provide technical assistance and intelligence, he said, adding other than it, there was no base of the CIA in the country.

He said the assistance provided by the US officials was an overall technical intelligence, and not in a particular event. Replying to a question regarding whereabouts of Osama bin Laden he said: "We have no evidence about him that he has come here in the past few years or that he is present anywhere in Pakistan." He said the reports of the US newspapers regarding presence of Osama in tribal areas of Pakistan were the fantasies of the media. -APP