WARSAW/KABUL, 27 June 2003 — Chief terror suspect Osama Bin Laden could be hiding along the porous Afghan-Pakistan border, Afghan leader Hamid Karzai said in Warsaw yesterday. “If Osama is alive he is around this region of ours or somewhere there. On the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Karzai told a press conference in Warsaw.

“Sometimes he crosses the border here sometimes he crosses the border on the other side,” he added after talks with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski during the first official visit by an Afghan head of state to Poland since 1928. Bin Laden’s whereabouts remains unknown despite the US campaign to oust the hard-line Taleban regime from Afghanistan accused of harboring his Al-Qaeda network blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

But Karzai said Afghanistan was working with Pakistan, which once supported the Taleban before it was toppled in late 2001, to boost the fight against terrorism. “Cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan jointly combating terrorism is an extremely, extremely important contribution to the fight against terrorism globally,” he said.

He added he was pleased at the reception Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf received at a summit with US President George W. Bush in the United States this week during which Washington pledged three billion dollars in aid to Islamabad. “I was happy to see President Musharraf’s visit in Washington materialized with success,” Karzai said.

Poland reaffirmed support for Afghanistan but ruled out any chance of boosting its current aid, either financial or military, to Kabul. “Since the start we have been committed to helping Afghanistan and we want to continue that, but it would be difficult right now to contribute any more,” said Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz on Polish radio.

The spokesman for the Defense Ministry, Eugeniusz Mleczak, similarly said he did not “foresee for the next two years that our presence in Afghanistan can be boosted,” especially since “we have major responsibilities in other regions of the world.” Karzai flew into US-ally Poland late Wednesday at the start of a tour that will also take in Switzerland for talks on Afghan security and reconstruction.

Poland is due next month to send some 2,200 troops to Iraq to take responsibility for security in one of the post-war, multinational stabilization force sectors set up by US-led coalition forces. Later, Karzai heads to Switzerland to address the start of the three-day Crans Montana Forum of international leaders and top business and finance figures, including some 16 heads of state, eight premiers and 300 officials.

Meanwhile, Maj. Mohammad Farid Ahmadi will become the first officer from the nascent Afghan National Army to attend the top US military college at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, a US military spokesman said yesterday. “An Afghan National Army major will be the first ANA officer to attend at the United States Army Command and General Staff college at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in the near future,” Col. Rodney Davis told reporters at Bagram Air Base 50 kilometers north of Kabul.

Ahmadi, 30, is an instructor at Kabul Military Training Center where ANA officers, noncommissioned officers and enlisted soldiers are trained. “The US Army college prepares captains and majors as future senior leaders in their respective militaries,” Davis said. “The future success of the ANA and subsequently the stability of Afghanistan depends on people like Maj. Ahmadi who play a key role in the future of Afghanistan.”