WASHINGTON, June 25: US intelligence believes Osama bin laden is probably alive and hiding out in Pakistan’s tribal area, but US officials conceded on Monday they don’t really know.

“We don’t have a clue where he is,” said a US defense official. “If he’s dead or alive, whether he’s in Afghanistan or Pakistan — we don’t know.”

Osama’s fate resurfaced over the weekend in an audiotape attributed to Al Qaeda spokesman Suleiman Abu Ghaith, who claimed he is alive and well and will appear soon on a television broadcast.

Abu Ghaith also warned that America should “fasten the seat belts” for more Al Qaeda attacks on US and Jewish targets.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said on Monday US officials had not made a “final assessment” about the tape aired on Sunday by the Arabic satellite television station, Al Jazeera, but said Al Qaeda clearly continued to pose a threat with or without Osama bin Laden.

“We’ve done an awful lot to dismantle the organization, to arrest their people, to roll up finances but we’ve also made absolutely clear that there (are) continuing threats from this organization and from the pieces of this organization as we go forward,” he said.

A US official said there was no way of knowing whether Abu Ghaith was telling the truth or merely boosting Al Qaeda morale in claiming that Osama was alive.

“Our general belief is that he probably is alive,” the official said. “On the other hand, if he is, why aren’t we hearing from him instead of Abu Ghaith.”

The prevailing view of the US intelligence community is that Osama bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan’s tribal area, “but nothing is chipped in stone”, the official said.

Several hundred Al Qaeda fighters are believed to have escaped there from Afghanistan, taking advantage of local sympathies and the lack of control over the areas by Pakistani authorities.

US intelligence, however, has had no direct evidence that Osama bin Laden is alive “in a long while”, a US defence official said.

American military commanders thought they had cornered the Al Qaeda leader in the Tora Bora mountains last December.

Intercepted communications and sightings had placed Osama at the besieged Al Qaeda stronghold, but when the fighting for Tora Bora ended there was no trace of him.

A video-tape broadcast by Al Jazeera in December showed Osama gaunt and pale with a seemingly immobile left arm, leading some analysts to speculate he was sick or wounded.

The Abu Ghaith message comes amid US concerns that a spate of recent attacks indicate that Al Qaeda operatives are regrouping for attacks outside of Afghanistan.

The audio message referred to an attack in April on an ancient Jewish synagogue in Tunisia that killed 17 people, including 11 German tourists.

That attack has been followed by a deadly car bombing at the US consulate in Karachi and a plot uncovered in Morocco to attack US shipping in Gibraltar.

But there appear to be differing views among US analysts over whether the attacks are orchestrated by Al Qaeda’s top leaders, or are local operations by hardliners who have made their way home from the Afghan war.

“They clearly are dispersing, having had to leave the sanctuary they were in,” said the US official.

“Whether they are regrouping, whatever that means, is harder to say. They continue to try to operate to the extent that they can, but priority number one is staying alive and uncaptured,” the official said.

A US defence official, however, said it would be a “false assumption” to conclude that Al Qaeda’s dispersal meant it has lost its ability to conduct operations on a global scale.

“It’s a very flat organization, very compact, small cells. As long as cells can operate with one or two people, they can continue to function,” the official said.—AFP