Islamabad, October 05: Former Pakistani military ruler Pervez Musharraf says that the US and Pakistani intelligence services were closing in on Osama Bin Laden five years ago but suddenly lost track.
Musharraf, who is currently on a lecture tour of the US, told students and delegates at a college in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on Friday that both Pakistani and US intelligence have failed to collect any details regarding Bin Laden’s whereabouts.
“It was some five years back when there was some intelligence that got picked up of a broad location,” he was quoted by the USA Today website as saying. “Then suddenly, we lost track.”
“It was a failure of Pakistan and a failure of US intelligence also,” he said of the search for Bin Laden.
US officials believe that Bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, is hiding somewhere in Pakistan’s volatile tribal belt bordering Afghanistan.
Musharraf, who resigned under pressure, last year, emphasized that if the Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents were allowed to return to power in Afghanistan, they would destabilize the troubled region and pose a major threat to the United States.
Musharraf, who was described by political opponents as a military dictator when he led Pakistan, was president from 1999 to 2008.
—-Agencies