Berlin: Osama bin Laden likely is living in Pakistan, but that country's efforts to catch him have been ''half-hearted'' so far, Afghanistan's foreign minister was quoted as saying on Saturday.
''According to all that we know, he actually is living in Pakistan, close to the Afghan border,'' Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta was quoted as telling Germany's Bild am Sonntag in a preview of an interview being published on Sunday.
''Our neighbor could surely catch him and put him on trial,'' he added, according to the newspaper.
''But attempts to do this have to our knowledge always been half-hearted.''
Earlier this month, a top US counterterrorism official, Henry Crumpton, said that parts of Pakistan are a ''safe haven'' for militants and the al-Qaeda leader was more likely to be hiding there than in neighboring Afghanistan.
Pakistan has dismissed assertions that it is not doing enough to track down militants.
A senior US security official said earlier this month that most of the al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership had found safe haven in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt that borders Afghanistan, and that bin Laden was probably living in Pakistan.
The remarks were angrily rejected by Islamabad.
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