ISN SECURITY WATCH (07/09/04) - Pakistani officials have called “political” recent comments by a top US counter-terrorism official that the two allies were moving closer to capturing Osama bin Laden. Over the weekend, top US counter-terrorism official Joseph Cofer Black made assertions that progress had been made towards pinning bin Laden down. When journalists asked if concrete progress had been made during the past two months, Black said: “Yes, I would say this.” “If [bin Laden] had a watch, he should be looking at it because the clock is ticking. He will be caught,” Black told reporters in the Pakistani capital Islamabad last Friday. In a separate interview with Geo magazine, Black said: “What I tell people, I would be surprised but not necessarily shocked if we wake up tomorrow and he’s been caught along with all his lieutenants. That can happen because of the programs and infrastructure in place.” However, Pakistan has said that the US official’s comments are misleading at best. Neither Pakistani nor US officials seem to have any clear intelligence information on bin Laden’s exact whereabouts - a fact that Pakistani officials have conceded. The Pakistani Information Ministry on Tuesday denied that any real progress had been made in recent times in the hunt for bin Laden, who is believed to be hiding out in the mountainous Afghan-Pakistan border region. “We don’t have any information about bin Laden,” the Ministry said in a statement. Pakistan’s top government spokesman, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, said that Black’s recent comment about bin Laden’s imminent capture was a “political statement”, designed as an election ploy ahead of November’s US presidential poll.