Taliban says bin Laden alive - Al Arabiya TV

DUBAI, Sep 26 (Reuters) Dubai-based Al Arabiya television today quoted a Taliban official as saying al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was alive and in good health.

The Arabic channel said its Pakistan bureau had received a call from the unnamed official of the ousted Afghan movement a few days after a leaked French secret document said Saudi intelligence believed bin Laden died last month in Pakistan.

''The official said bin Laden was alive and that reports that he is ill are not true,'' said Bakr Atyani, Al Arabiya's Islamabad correspondent. ''The Taliban checked with members who are close to al Qaeda that these reports are baseless.'' Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri are believed to be hiding in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

US-led forces have been searching there for bin Laden since they toppled Afghanistan's Taliban government after it refused to hand over the mastermind behind the September. 11 2001 attacks in the United States.

Bin Laden was last seen in a video statement aired to coincide with the November 2004 US presidential elections.

A report in French regional daily L'Est Republicain last week quoted a document from the DGSE foreign intelligence service, saying the Saudi secret services were convinced bin Laden had died of typhoid.

A US intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Washington believes bin Laden is still alive but added that there was no reason to view the Al Arabiya report as any more credible than the French newspaper account of his possible death.

''We don't have anything that would lend credence, quite frankly, to either story ... Our assessment is that he's still alive,'' he said.

Saudi Arabia said on Sunday it had no evidence that bin Laden was dead. French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said that as far as he knew the Saudi-born militant was alive.

Bin Laden has issued several audio messages in the past two years, the last one in July 2006 in which he vowed al Qaeda would fight the United States anywhere in the world.

REUTERS BDP RK2108