Osama bin Laden Should Be Sought for in the Area of Jalalabad

International terrorist No. 1 Osama bin Laden should be sought for in the area of the Tora Bora base which was built high in the mountains, in the area which is difficult to assess, some twenty-forty kilometres to the south east of Jalalabad, the administrative centre of the Nangahar Province which borders on Pakistan. This opinion was expressed to RIA Novosti by General Mohammed Ismail, former high-ranking official in the Defence Ministry of Afghanistan at the time when Najibullah headed the government. He lives in Moscow since 1997. According to the general, "neither in the area of Kandahar nor Khost, an Afghan town in the south east of the country bordering on Pakistan, there are such well-equipped catacombs and caves, from the engineering point of view, which exist on the Tora Bora base which was built by Afghan mujahedins in the 1980s with the financial aid of the United States." "Therefore, if bin Laden has not left Afghanistan, he must be hiding there," believes the Afghan general. In his opinion, stability in Afghanistan will not set in until the Afghan-Pakistani border is reliably closed. According to the information of the general, in the border areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan there are up to two hundred roads quite suitable for automobiles, and more than a thousand paths which are used by Pakistani mercenaries to freely penetrate Afghanistan and go back. "If the border is not closed, there will be no end to these movements of the former and the present-day Pakistani military men," said Mohammed Ismail.