BIN LADEN 'HANDED TO US IF CAUGHT'
From correspondents in Islamabad, Pakistan
February 24, 2004
PAKISTAN today indicated it would hand over Osama bin Laden to the United States if he was caught on its soil.
The comment from Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmud Kasuri followed a British newspaper report that bin Laden, the head of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, was cornered in a remote part of northern Pakistan.
Kasuri said an amnesty offered by President Pervez Musharraf, where foreigners surrendering in Pakistan will not be handed over to any power, would not apply to bin Laden.
If "somebody had committed a crime against the United States that is separate issue", he said.
Bin Laden is wanted in the United States for a series of terrorist acts including the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Musharraf last week asked foreign militants fleeing from Afghanistan into Pakistan's autonomous tribal belt to "disarm and surrender", and offered assurances that they would not be handed over to any other country.
Pakistan, a key US ally in war against terrorism, has arrested more than 500 al-Qaeda suspects who fled Afghanistan in the wake of US led attacks which ousted the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001.
Kasuri said Pakistan in the past handed over some key al-Qaeda operatives to the United States after it provided evidence against them.
Britain's Sunday Express newspaper quoted a US intelligence source as saying bin Laden was "boxed in" in an area 16 kms square "north of the town of Khanozai and the city of Quetta".
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,8775211%5E1702,00.html