Pakistan said on Sunday it doubted that the world's top fugitive, Osama bin Laden, was hiding on its soil which it said was not "friendly" to the Saudi-born dissident. "There is no conclusive evidence that he (bin Laden) is dead. But if he is alive, Pakistan is not a friendly land for him," Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider told reporters in Qatar during an official visit.
"We have sought the help of tribes in the areas close to the Afghanistan border and they are cooperating with us. I very much doubt he is in Pakistan," he added.

The fate of bin Laden, the man Washington blames for masterminding the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities, has been a mystery since the end U.S.-led military campaign on Afghanistan to find and punish him.

Afghanistan's Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said earlier this week that he believed bin Laden was in the region but not in Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials have often said that had bin Laden been hiding in the Pakistani side of the border area with Pakistan they would have known.

Pakistan played a key role in the U.S-led offensive that toppled Afghanistan's Taliban rulers who gave shelter to bin Laden and members of his al Qaeda militant network.

PAKISTAN'S ROLE IN THE ANTI-TERRORIST COALITION TURNS FORMER ALLIES AGAINST MUSHARRAF

Observers say, when terrorists struck the twin towers and Pentagon, the Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan lost its only friend - Pakistan.

The next day, President Pervez Musharraf promised "unstinting cooperation" with the United States to fight global terror.

Appearing on television in his general's uniform bedecked with battle ribbons, the military ruler declared his move the best option for Pakistan.

"The fight is against terrorism, a battle that has the support of all Islamic countries," he declared.

But the price for Pakistan has been heavy. Pakistanis increasingly fear that the war in Afghanistan has sown the seeds of social, political and cultural conflict within their own country.

After Musharraf threw his support to the Americans, Pakistan became the cornerstone of the U.S.-led campaign. And Musharraf, once shunned by the West as a dictator who seized power in a military coup, has emerged as America's most important Muslim ally in the anti-terror campaign.

But it has enraged the country's militant Islamic movement, which the government had long cultivated to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s and as a proxy army to battle Indian forces in Kashmir.

Those Islamic extremists now pose a terrorist threat to Pakistan, and Musharraf's own life has been threatened.

Meanwhile, Musharraf has engineered constitutional changes which Pakistani critics decry as undemocratic, but with little reproach from the United States or other Western champions of democracy.

PHOTO CAPTION

Pakistan's Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider is pictured in April. REUTERS/Bazuki Muhammad