Bin Laden hunt widens to Pakistan

The hunt for Osama bin Laden spread to Pakistan today amid reports that he has slipped out of Afghanistan.

Teams of FBI agents working with Pakistan's police and military intelligence service the ISI are scouring known safe houses and Islamic institutions operated by Taliban sympathisers.

A number of hardline clerics, already under house arrest for organising illegal protests, are being questioned and troops have been deployed at unofficial border crossings.

American special forces units are monitoring roads and key routes inside Afghanistan.

Suspicion that Bin Laden may have left Afghanistan followed intelligence reports that showed no recent activity around routes into the mountain areas believed to house bunkers and cave hideouts.

"It leads them to think they might be looking in the wrong place," a security source said.

Bin Laden's Taliban hosts have a large number of supporters in Pakistan and scores of Taliban commanders and religious leaders have crossed the border in recent days. The retreat from Jalalabad led to an exodus from the south-east provinces.

The widening of the hunt for Bin Laden comes in the wake of the unexpectedly swift collapse of the Taliban which had been sheltering him. The security services here believe the avowed strategy of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, to withdraw to mountain hideouts to fight a guerrilla war, may now not be viable.

It was pointed out that the complete rout of Taliban forces leaves the hardliners and Bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network isolated.

"If he stays put inside Afghanistan he risks being hunted down one day," the security source said. "He has very few friends there now."

The search for Bin Laden is now the American military's priority in Afghanistan. But no one is underestimating the difficulties. US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said: "Finding handfuls of people is indeed like finding a needle in a haystack."