Pakistan to consider playing a role in Osama bin Laden case

"Primarily it is an issue between the U.S. and Afghanistan," a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Riaz Mohammad Khan, told reporters in Islamabad. Pakistan's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, was only suggesting that "such problems are resolvable" and not making a proposal when he mentioned the Lockerbie trial in a recent interview with an Egyptian newspaper, the spokesman said.

Khan was commenting on Afghan Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Mutawakil's reported offer of a "fourth option" to resolve the bin Laden issue.

Washington is demanding that the radical Islamic Taliban surrender bin Laden to stand trial on charges of terrorism. The Taliban regime rejected the demand even in face of tightened sanctions imposed by the United Nations. Washington did not accept the options offered by Taliban to try Osama in an Islamic court if the U.S. provided convincing evidence, or the Organisation of Islamic Conference take up the matter.

It also suggested Islamic scholars drawn from three Moslem countries try the alleged mastermind of the bombing of two U.S. embassies in east Africa in 1998 which killed 224 people and wounded some 4,000. dpa am ms

(bb/sda)