Pakistan's Interior Minister Says Bin Laden Isn't In Pakistan, That He Is In Afghanistan

Pakistan's interior minister is calling on the U.S. to halt UAV strikes inside of Pakistan because, he claims, that since Pakistani troops have not found Osama bin Laden in their current operations, bin Laden is not inside of Pakistan and then, he further speculates that bin Laden is actually in Afghanistan. Here's some of his statements from the article at Times Online:

Osama bin Laden and the top Al-Qaeda leadership are not in Pakistan, making US missile attacks against them futile, according to the country’s interior minister.
“If Osama was in Pakistan we would know, with all the thousands of troops we have sent into the tribal areas in recent months,” Rehman Malik told The Sunday Times. “If he and all these four or five top people were in our area they would have been caught, the way we are searching.”
He added: “According to our information Osama is in Afghanistan, probably Kunar, as most of the activities against Pakistan are being directed from Kunar.”

This is ludicrous. This guy is spouting off like there's been this all-encompassing operation of Pakistani troops throughout all of NW Pakistan when in fact, they have put troops in one and a half of the vast provinces in the region. At the same time, every single expert on the Taliban will tell you that Mullah Omar is in Pakistan and has been for years - so this "expert" on Pakistan can assure us that bin Laden is NOT there but can't tell us where Omar is?

This is all typical of Pakistani officials - they announce all of this anger over U.S. UAV attacks and then secretly ask the U.S. to continue them. They come out time and time again saying that bin Laden and top al Qaeda are NOT in Pakistan yet cannot explain why al Qaeda planning has assassinated the likes of Bhutto and conducted bombings in major Pakistani cities.

This guy's full of shit.

Stop bombing us: Osama isn’t here, says Pakistan

Osama bin Laden and the top Al-Qaeda leadership are not in Pakistan, making US missile attacks against them futile, according to the country’s interior minister.
“If Osama was in Pakistan we would know, with all the thousands of troops we have sent into the tribal areas in recent months,” Rehman Malik told The Sunday Times. “If he and all these four or five top people were in our area they would have been caught, the way we are searching.”
He added: “According to our information Osama is in Afghanistan, probably Kunar, as most of the activities against Pakistan are being directed from Kunar.”
Washington does not directly acknowledge its missile attacks on Pakistani territory by unmanned drone aircraft but Pakistani officials say the US has carried out more than 40 attacks inside its borders in the past 10 months, killing hundreds of people.

CIA officials claim these attacks have been highly effective in disrupting Al-Qaeda’s ability to operate. However, Malik insists they are a waste of time because the Al-Qaeda leadership is on the other side of the border in eastern Afghanistan.
“They’re getting mid-level people not big fish,” he said. “And they are counterproductive because they are killing civilians and turning locals against our government. We try to win people’s hearts, then one drone attack drives them away. One attack alone last week killed 50 people.”
US officials in Islamabad say Pakistan’s government is being disingenuous, claiming to oppose the drone attacks to win domestic support, while being quite happy to benefit from them.
On Friday two missiles fired from a drone destroyed a communications centre in South Waziristan that belonged to Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban responsible for a recent string of suicide attacks in Pakistan.
Pakistan’s military admits it has been helped by intelligence from US surveillance flights over the tribal areas as well as the mountain region of Swat, where thousands of troops have been battling against another Taliban group which had taken over the area, forcing more than 2m people to flee.