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by Rana Jawad, 

ISLAMABAD, March 7 (AFP) - The hunt for Osama bin Laden intensified Friday in two remote districts on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, as a senior official warned the al-Qaeda leader could not hide for much longer.

"If the information is accurate, then he cannot hide for long," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Information gleaned from captured al-Qaeda number three, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, led to Chitral in the north-west, and somewhere along 1,250 kilometer (775 mile) south-west border with Afghanistan in Baluchistan.

"I will not say that we are close to the man, but there are some very important pieces of information with us," the official said.

"There is a possibility that bin Laden could be hiding in Baluchistan close to the Afghan border or in Chitral. These areas are being searched."

Chitral lies in scenic mountains hugging the rugged Afghan border some 300 kilometers (185 miles) north-west of Islamabad in North West Frontier Province.

Bin Laden has eluded a massive manhunt by a US-led military coalition in Afghanistan and 60,000 to 70,000 troops in Pakistan, assisted by US intelligence agents, for more than a year.

He was believed to have been in the Tora Bora mountains in late 2001, and to have escaped a coalition bombing offensive by slipping over the porous border into Pakistan.

The last confirmed sightings of bin Laden were in the southern city of Kandahar, where his Taliban hosts were headquartered, in November 2001.

Western intelligence officials believe he has been hiding in the tribal belt along the 1,200 kilometer (744 mile) north-west border with Afghanistan.

The remote mountainous region is home to fiercely independent Pashtun tribes who are deeply conservative Islamists and are of the same ethnic group as the Taliban. Anti-US sentiments run high among the tribes.

President Pervez Musharraf told AFP last year that he believed bin Laden would have moved back and forth over the border.

In an interview with CNN Friday he said he doubted bin Laden was hiding in any Pakistani cities.

"He would be moving large bodyguards, therefore he would need sanctuary, need a bigger area, a safe area, therefore I don't think he can be in the cities."

Since Sheikh Mohammed's capture, US planes have been airdropping leaflets over Baluchistan-Afghan border areas offering money for information leading to the capture of bin Laden or his Egyptian deputy Ayman al-Zawahri.

Sheikh Mohammed had been in hiding in Baluchistan in February before moving to the northern city of Rawalpindi. Investigators believed he narrowly escaped a raid on February 13 in the Baluch capital Quetta, where they caught an Egyptian al-Qaeda suspect.

The Egyptian was instrumental in pointing the hunters to Rawalpindi, but an informant had tipped off authorities to Sheikh Mohammed's exact location, the Pakistani official said.

Sheikh Mohammed was grilled for three days by a joint team of Pakistani and US interrogators before being airlifted to a US detention center at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, Pakistani officials say.

One of his Pakistani interrogators told AFP that he admitted to corresponding with bin Laden in February via a round-about chain of messengers.

The interrogator said there was nothing in Sheikh Mohammed's revelations or evidence found on him that indicated the two men had met in February, as some reports had claimed.

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