'No sign of Osama in tribal areas'
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PESHAWAR, Pakistan (CNN) -- -- Repeated searches by the Pakistani military have failed to turn up any trace of Osama bin Laden in tribal lands near the border with Afghanistan, a Pakistani army commander said.
"He requires his own protection, and the kind of security apparatus that he is supposed to have around him, that gives a very big signature," said Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain, military chief of northwest Pakistan Thursday.
"And there is not an inch of South Waziristan agency or the tribal area which we have not swept time and again. And if he was here in the tribal areas, I can assure you that he wouldn't have escaped my eyes and ears."
Hussain told Reuters he is happy with the amount of work his country has done in flushing out militants and apprehending terrorists. And now, he said, it's time for other countries to step up to the plate.
"At the moment, most of the militants, they are on the run in search of finding new abodes, new hide-outs," he said.
"So that gives me a very good feeling that I've really uprooted them from their old safe havens and I have divested them of the local support.
"The number of people that we have apprehended, the number of terrorists that we have busted, the hierarchy of al Qaeda whom we have apprehended, I think Pakistan has done its bit," Hussain said.
"It's the other countries, and especially Afghanistan, which needs to do more."
He said he felt no American pressure to do that work, which began before the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
"We thought that (the) sectarian militancy and the religious extremism that was impinging on the internal security ... it was time to take stock of that."
