Bin Laden is alive and planning new attacks, says German intelligence

A German intelligence chief has added to a string of assertions that Osama bin Laden is alive and planning new attacks, saying he is probably in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"Given the information we have, we are convinced that bin Laden is still alive," August Hanning, president of Germany's foreign intelligence agency BND, told Welt am Sonntag newspaper. "He is still the figurehead of al-Qa'ida, but doesn't appear to move around very much."

Mr Hanning said that an estimated 5,000 al-Qa'ida operatives remained in Afghanistan and Pakistan, while others had returned to their countries of origin to plan new attacks.

"They will do all they can to strike again. We have to be prepared for that," he said.

Mr Hanning's remarks follow claims from al-Qa'ida last week that Mr bin Laden and the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar, were alive and well and planning new attacks.

Mr bin Laden's spokesman, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, was quoted last week in the Algerian Arabic-language newspaper El Youm as saying the group would soon strike US targets in America and abroad.

Another man, claiming to be an al-Qa'ida spokesman with the nom de guerre Abu-Leith al-Libi, told the Middle East Broadcasting Centre: "We are attempting to expand the frontlines. It will be a war of killings, a war [against] businesses, which will hit the enemy where he does not expect."

Mr Hanning said the al- Qa'ida leader's desire to attack the US had been sharpened by the campaign to oust the Taliban. But he cast doubt on Mr bin Laden's role in the 11 September attacks, saying: "He didn't prepare the attacks operationally, probably didn't even know all the details of the preparations." Those attacks, Mr Hanning said, would have cost al-Qa'ida little more than US$1m (£640,000).

Germany has played a central part in the investigation into the attacks, monitoring al-Qa'ida activity inside its borders.