Pakistan Denies Bin Laden Visited for Dialysis Tue Jan 29, 9:42 AM ET Original Link:  http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020129/ pl_nm/attack_pakistan_binladen_dc_4&printer=1 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - While Pakistan on Tuesday denied a report Osama bin Laden underwent secret kidney dialysis in one of its hospitals a day before the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush told lawmakers the Saudi exile still had not been located. The foreign minister of Afghanistan's interim government, visiting Washington with Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, said he believed bin Laden was still in Afghanistan. "I think that he is alive. Most likely in Afghanistan," Abdullah Abdullah told CNN. U.S. officials, including presidential adviser Karen Hughes, said they had no information regarding the CBS report on Monday quoting Pakistani intelligence sources who said the accused mastermind of the attacks on New York and Washington got the treatment at a military hospital in Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad. House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt, after a meeting at the White House with Bush, told CNN U.S. officials had "no idea if it's true or not. Obviously it's something that will have to be run down." Gephardt said Bush had told lawmakers the United States still did not know where bin Laden was in the wake of the U.S. bombing campaign that dislodged Afghanistan's ruling Taliban and sent top al Qaeda operatives into hiding. "We are still seeking to find him," Gephardt said. "In fact they think he may be in another country." The Missouri Democrat, however, said he believed "the best intelligence" still indicated bin Laden was probably in Afghanistan, "hidden away in some of these caves and it may be a long time to find him." Abdullah said the CBS report would "have to be studied" but that he had no reason to believe it was true, or false. "I do not rule out such a possibility," he said. In Islamabad earlier, Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan called the report absurd and the top military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi, said he had checked with the two military hospitals with dialysis facilities in Rawalpindi and found there had been "no such thing." CBS quoted an unidentified nurse as saying the hospital's urology department was cleared of its usual staff and replaced with another team for bin Laden's treatment. Hughes told the CBS "The Early Show" program that though she was aware of reports the Saudi-born militant suffered from a kidney complaint, she knew nothing further. "I just don't know," Hughes said. In December, bin Laden appeared on a videotape sent to Qatar's al-Jazeera television, appearing gaunt, hollow-eyed and pale. The tape was apparently recorded in early to mid-December. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has said bin Laden may have died of a kidney ailment or may have been killed by U.S. bombing. Washington launched air strikes on Afghanistan in October to flush out bin Laden and punish his Taliban protectors after the September attacks that killed more than 3,000 people.