ISLAMABAD, Jan 29: Pakistan said on Tuesday a report that Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden underwent secret kidney dialysis in one of its hospitals a day before the Sept 11 attacks on the United States was absurd.

America’s CBS News, quoting Pakistani intelligence sources, reported on Monday that the accused mastermind of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon got the treatment at a military hospital in Rawalpindi.

“That is an absurd report,” Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan told a news briefing.

Chief of the ISPR, Major-General Rashid Qureshi, told the briefing he had checked with the two military hospitals with dialysis facilities in Rawalpindi and found there had been “no such thing”.

“This smacks of a story that has been tailor-made,” Gen Qureshi said. CBS quoted an unidentified nurse as saying the hospital’s urology department was cleared of its usual staff and replaced with another team for Osama’s treatment.

But Gen Qureshi derided the suggestion that there was any secret team of medical workers.—Reuters