WASHINGTON, June 4: US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld believes that most Pakistani troops positioned along the border with Afghanistan remain in place, despite tensions with India.

In an interview with The Washington Post, published on Tuesday, Mr Rumsfeld said that some small elements of the Pakistani forces, “some reconnaissance people and some communications people, nothing big”, had been moved away. But “the (Pakistani) forces are still reasonably in place along the Afghan border.”

Pakistan Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi had also denied on Sunday any major re-deployment of the Pakistani forces from the western to the border with India.

Mr Rumsfeld, who is due in Pakistan within the next few days and is expected to discuss the situation on the Afghanistan front, acknowledged that many Al Qaeda fighters had fled Afghanistan, and got away across the border with Pakistan. He said: “It has been our worry for the last six months that the border is porous, that people move back and forth, going both ways, and that there are pockets of Al Qaida and Taliban still floating around on both sides.”

The defence secretary said Osama bin Laden did not seem to be formally directing Al Qaeda operations, even though there was no doubt that the terrorist network remained active around the globe. “My guesss is, if he were active, we would know it, we would have some visible sense of it, which we haven’t seem to have had, for some reason”.

Mr Rumsfeld said he did not know whether bin Laden was keeping a low profile for security reasons, suffering from an illness or was dead.

In its report on the Rumsfeld interview, the paper quoted a senior intelligence official as saying he thought bin Laden was alive and had “ intentionally lowered his profile for security reasons”. He could be either in Afghanistan or Pakistan.