The outgoing US Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad has rejected the reported presence of top US wanted men Osama Bin Laden and Taliban's chief Mullah Mohammad Omar in the post-conflict nation.

"Mullah Omar is not in Afghanistan and I do not believe that Osama is in Afghanistan," he told journalists at a press conference in the US embassy compound Thursday.

However, he declined to point a finger at any specific country that possibly provides shelter to the king of terror and his ally who are still at large.

Khlilzad's remarks came a day after a Taliban commander, Mullah Akhtar Usmani, claimed that both Omar and his guest Bin Laden were alive and in good health.

Usmani, in an interview from unknown location with a Pakistani- based private television channel that was aired Wednesday, said that "Omar is in Taliban's command in Afghanistan while Osama is safe and sound."

In the meantime, the Afghanistan-born US diplomat who served as President Bush's special envoy to the post-Taliban central Asian state called for regional cooperation to check insurgency.

"It requires cooperation from the law enforcement units of a variety of countries and that they do not allow to incite the violence and they should not allow their territory to be used against Afghanistan," he noted.

The US diplomat, who is going to assume his new job as ambassador to Iraq, admitted that capturing fugitives like Bin Laden or Omar is difficult.

It is not an easy job to find one person may be helping him in a vast region, he added.

Both Osama and Omar with the head prices of 25 million US dollars and 10 million US dollars respectively have escaped the US biggest military manhunt in the region since the collapse of Taliban regime in late 2001.

Source: Xinhua