India's defence ministry has denied a report that US and British special forces were hunting for the world's most wanted man Osama bin Laden in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
A report in London's Daily Telegraphsaid that US Delta Force soldiers and British SAS troops had formed a 40-man operation in a bid to hunt down bin Laden.
"There is no truth in it... we strongly deny it," defence ministry spokesman Mr P.K. Bandhopadhyay told AFP.
The Daily Telegraph report said Indian intelligence had told the CIA last month they believed bin Laden was hiding in Kashmir's Himalayan mountains and was being protected by the Islamic guerrilla group Harkat-ul-Mujahedin.
Kashmir is India's only Muslim-majority state and New Delhi has been waging a battle against Islamic militants there since the outbreak of a separatist insurgency in 1989. The newspaper report said US and British special forces teams were employing a range of high-tech devices to hunt bin Laden.
A spy satellite above the Indian Ocean operated by US and British intelligence is being used to monitor possible communications between bin Laden and members of his al-Qaeda terror network, it added.
Indian defence analysts conceded that Indian-Kashmir with its inaccessible terrain was a "probable hiding place".
"If bin Laden is looking for a safe haven, then Indian-Kashmir is not too bad a place," said Mr Brahma Chellany of the Delhi based Centre for Policy Research.
But analysts discounted the possibility of New Delhi allowing foreign troops to operate on Indian soil.
India was one of the first countries to support the US-led war against terrorism which dislodged the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, accused of sheltering bin Laden.
AFP