Osama is still in Pakistan, says US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen.

In an interview to Al Jazeera TV, Mullen said he believed the top leadership of Al Qaeda, including Osama Bin Laden, is in Pakistan.. When asked why the United States was not in FATA despite having the knowledge that Al Qaeda was present there, he said, “Because FATA is in Pakistan and Pakistan is a sovereign country and we don’t go into sovereign countries.”
He said Al Qaeda could strike the US from FATA therefore the top objective of the current US strategy was to defeat it, adding that Washington did not have any troops on ground in Pakistan chasing the Taliban.

The Daily Telegraph in an Islamabad date lined desptach on July 23 said a Pakistani military intelligence official confirmed the theory, saying: "We have the same information but it has not yet been independently confirmed."

The CIA has set up a listening post in the northern area of Chitral, north of Bajaur, and rumours persist that he may be moving among the Chitrali valleys inhabited by animist non-Muslim Kalash people. 

Until recently Washington used to say that bin Laden was suspected of having sought refuge in the area of the mountainous Afghan-Pakistani border after escaping from US-led forces in eastern Afghanistan in 2001.

But now US officials have pinpointed Pakistan. Even Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said Washington has given the Pakistani government information about where it believes al-Qaeda leaders are located on its soil.
"With respect to the location of those who were part of the planning and execution of the attack of 9/11 against our country, we firmly believe that a significant number of them are in the border area of Pakistan," she said.

However, Rehman Malik, Pakistan’s interior minister, has claimed bin Laden is hiding in the Afghan province of Kunar across the border from Bajaur where Pakistani troops have been battling militants.