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Paris and Islamabad : A French regional newspaper quoted a French secret service report on Saturday as saying that Saudi Arabia is convinced that Al Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden died of typhoid in Pakistan last month.
The daily L'Est Republicain printed what it said was a copy of the report dated September 21 and said it was shown to President Jacques Chirac, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and France's interior and defense ministers on the same day.
"According to a usually reliable source, the Saudi services are now convinced that Osama Bin Laden is dead," the document said.
"The information gathered by the Saudis indicates that the head of Al Qaida was a victim while he was in Pakistan on August 23, 2006, of a very serious case of typhoid which led to a partial paralysis of his internal organs."
The report, which was stamped with a "confidential defense" label and the initials of the French secret service, said Saudi Arabia first heard the information on September 4 and that it was waiting for more details before making an official announcement.
Officials in Chirac's and Villepin's offices had no immediate comment.
Meanwhile, Pakistan said it has received no information from any foreign government that would corroborate a French newspaper report that Bin Laden died in Pakistan, a senior government official said.
Saudi-born Bin Laden was based in Afghanistan until the Taliban government there was overthrown by US-backed forces in late 2001. Since then, US and Pakistani officials have regularly said they believe he is hiding somewhere on the rugged border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The last videotaped message released by Bin Laden was in late 2004, but there have been several low quality audio tapes released this year.
Earlier this week, Pakistan President General Pervez Musharaff and US President George W. Bush disagreed publicly about the hunt for Bin Laden.
Friday's visit by General Musharaff to the White house has lent added spice to the subject.
Bush has gone back and forth on whether he would seek Pakistani permission to strike Bin Laden, and left the issue no clearer at the joint press conference.
Musharraf dismissed the matter as "semantics of the tactics" and stressed: "When the situation arises, we need to take the right decision to strike."
Meanwhile, former President Bill Clinton, angrily defending his efforts to capture Bin Laden, accused the Bush administration of doing far less to stop the Al Qaida leader before the September 11 attacks.
In a heated interview to be aired on Sunday on "Fox News Sunday," the former Democratic president defended the steps he took after Al Qaida's attack on the USS Cole in 2000 and faulted "right-wingers" for their criticism of his efforts to capture Bin Laden.
"But at least I tried. That's the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now," Clinton said when asked whether he had failed to fully anticipate Bin Laden's danger. "They had eight months to try,
they did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed."
The September 11 attacks occurred almost eight months after President George W. Bush succeeded Clinton in January 2001.
Clinton says he " authorised the CIA to get groups together to try to kill him." He added he had drawn up plans to go into
Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban and launch an attack against Bin Laden after the attack on the Cole in the Yemeni
port of Aden.
"Now if you want to criticise me for one thing, you can criticise me for this: after the Cole, I had battle plans drawn to go into Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban and launch a full-scale attack search for Bin Laden. But we needed basing rights in Uzbekistan - which we got after 9/11," Clinton said.
The former president complained at the time the CIA and FBI refused to certify Bin Laden was responsible for the USS Cole attack.
"While I was there, they refused to certify. So that meant I would have had to send a few hundred special forces in in
helicopters, refuel at night," he said.
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