ISLAMABAD, Sept 25: Pakistan on Monday emphatically rejected media reports that a controversial peace deal signed with militants in North Waziristan tribal area was made possible by a nod from Afghanistan’s Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

“It is baseless, it is totally baseless,” a foreign ministry spokesperson said about the reports appearing both at home and abroad amid accusations by critics that the government had given in to pro-Taliban militants to end military operations against fugitives from Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network and their local harbourers.

Spokesperson Tasnim Aslam, answering questions at the ministry’s weekly news briefing, also said Islamabad was unaware if Osama was alive or dead, after a French newspaper reported the world’s most wanted man had died of typhoid in Pakistan last month.

“We have no information about his coordinates,” she said, echoing previous comments by Pakistani officials about Saturday’s report in regional French newspaper L’East Republican, which quoted a French intelligence service report based on information from Saudi intelligence sources. “We have no information whether he is dead or alive,” she added.

The Saudi government on Sunday distanced itself from the newspaper report, calling it speculative while France, the United States and Britain have also said they are unable to confirm it.

Mullah Omar’s role in the Sept 6 agreement in North Waziristan was first claimed by his top military commander Mullah Dadullah who called a senior journalist in Peshawar by satellite telephone earlier this month to tell him that he visited South Waziristan and North Waziristan tribal agencies three months ago and advised militants not to fight the Pakistani armed forces.

The latest report in the online edition of Britain’s Daily Telegraph on Sunday said Mullah Omar had signed a letter explicitly endorsing the deal and quoted tribal elders in South Waziristan as saying the Taliban leader had sent Dadullah to ask local militants to sign the truce.

President Pervez Musharraf said after talks with US President George Bush last week in Washington that the deal was against the Taliban rather than favouring them and his US counterpart said he believed the general’s assurance.

But Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is due to meet President Bush along with President Musharraf on Wednesday, continued to point fingers at Pakistan for allegedly providing a sanctuary to Taliban leaders, calling in a speech to the UN General Assembly last week for looking beyond the Afghan borders for sources of terrorism.

Ms Aslam said Pakistan had not been pursuing a policy of abetting Taliban’s military activities, which she added, would be curbed by the North Waziristan accord by preventing cross-border movement of militants.

“We believe the Taliban leadership is inside Afghanistan,” she said, pointing to the Taliban insurgency being “deep inside Afghanistan far away from the border (with Pakistan)”.

She said President Musharraf had sought to clear Kabul’s “misperception” during a visit there early this month in talks with Mr Karzai and an address to the Afghan political elite.

PAKISTANIS KILLED IN IRAQ: The spokesperson told a questioner Pakistan was still trying to ascertain facts about a claim by a militant group in Iraq on Saturday that it had killed 10 Indian and Pakistani nationals it had abducted when they were on their way to Syria.