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Sharief met Osama bin Laden: Pak daily

US intelligence agencies have conclusive proof that Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief met Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden when he was the Punjab chief minister, a Peshawar daily quoting highly placed sources said.

The Frontier Post reported that the evidence collected by a joint team of the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation ''indicates that Sharief and Osama had met at the chief minister's secretariat in Lahore''.

The meeting, according to the paper, was arranged by a retired squadron leader of Pakistan Air Force, Khaled Khawaja. Khawaja was an Inter-Services Intelligence operative in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Later he joined Osama's militant group.

Sources which the Post quoted did not specify the nature of evidence with the US or the year Sharief and Osama met. Sharief was the chief minister of Punjab twice between 1985 and 1990.

The report quoting US diplomatic sources said that by denying any influence over Taliban or Osama, ''the Pakistan government is hoodwinking the United States which has requested it to help trace the Saudi fugitive.''

UNI

Osama bin Laden's biography
The World's Most Wanted Terrorist
The CIA's unclassified fact sheeton Osama bin Laden

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