We don't know where Osama is: Pentagon

The United States has said it has no idea where top Al Qaeda commanders Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are hiding, a day after a report claimed that the two fugitives are living in houses in northwest Pakistan under the Inter Services Intelligence's protection.

"I don't think we know where they are. If we knew where they are I think we'd do something about it," Deputy Secretary of Defence William Lynn told the popular Charlie Rose show in an interview.

Lynn was responding to a CNN report which quoted an unnamed North Atlantic Treaty Organisation official in Afghanistan as saying that Osama is not hiding in the caves, but has been provided a safe shelter by ISI elements at a secure location inside Pakistan.

"I don't think so. I think it was either an exaggeration in the telling or an exaggeration in the promotion of that. I don't think we know precisely where bin Laden is, and I don't think the report's accurate," Lynn said, adding that he has not seen the news report that elements in ISI were providing shelter to top al Qaeda leaders.

"Well, there are elements in the ISI that are engaged in things that are not helping (the war against terrorism). What all of those are, we do not know exactly. So I would not deny or express concern over news reports saying that bin Laden is being assisted by elements in ISI," Pentagon spokesman David Lapan told reporters.

The CNN in its news report from Kabul quoted a senior NATO official as saying that Osama and his deputy Zawahiri are believed to be hiding close to each other in houses in northwest Pakistan, but are not together.

"Nobody in Al Qaeda is living in a cave," the official was quoted as saying by the CNN. Pakistan has repeatedly denied protecting members of the Al Qaeda leadership.

The official said the general region where Osama is likely to have moved around in recent years ranges from the mountainous Chitral area in the far northwest near the Chinese border, to the Kurram Valley which neighbours Afghanistan's Tora Bora, one of the Taliban strongholds during the US invasion in 2001.

Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik denied that the two men are on Pakistani soil, but said that any information to the contrary should be shared with Pakistani officials so that they can take 'immediate action' to arrest the pair.