Osama is not hiding here: Pak defence minister

Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden is not hiding in its territory, Pakistan's new Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar has said.

"I don't think Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan because we have combed our area," Mukhtar told the Dawn news channel amid frequent Western media reports that terror mastermind was hiding in Pakistan's porous tribal areas bordering Afghnistan.

Acknowledging that it was not possible to totally control the border with Afghanistan, he said Pakistan is trying to apprehend all Al Qaeda operatives within its territory.

"I don't think that they would be in hundreds. It won't be more than hundreds, including all the leadership. We are trying our best to get hold of that leadership and to take them to courts and to see what we can do with them," he said.

He said the Pakistan Army "initially had some problems" in the war on terror as it was "trained to fight a traditional enemy", but things had improved in the last two years.

"There are minor hiccups in the system, but one can very safely say that we are not trained for the war which we are fighting but the army is not the only (force) fighting the war against terror. All the civilians are also fighting," he said, adding the armed forces cannot "think of fighting this war" if the civilians did not back them.

"We are not going to release anybody who is a terrorist. We will take them to task and they will have to fight their cases in courts," he said.

Asked about the possibility of withdrawing troops from the border with Afghanistan, Mukhtar said: "If we have peace with people up on the borders, then there is no need to keep our army for a long time. As long as we don't clean our country of terrorists (and) suicide bombers, I don't think that it will be worthwhile to stop at this moment."