U.S. forces have joined exercises with Pakistan's Army before, but the involvement of a small contingent of Afghan troops in the air assault drills dubbed Inspired Gambit, to be held in early May, will be a first - an apparent effort to patch up frayed relations.

"We feel that it is important that the only way we will solve the terrorism and insurgency problem is to work closely together with each other," U.S. military spokesman Col. Laurent Fox said during a news conference in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Monday.

For much of this year, Afghan and Pakistani officials have been accusing each other of not doing enough to prevent Taliban and al-Qaida militants crossing back and forth between the two countries. As attacks have escalated on both sides of the rugged frontier, relations have plummeted.

Fox said Inspired Gambit would take place at the border, but a Pakistani army official, who requested anonymity, said the exercise would be held inland - like previous U.S.-Pakistan maneuvers.

Last year, a joint U.S.-Pakistan air assault exercise was held at a Pakistani military facility at Cherat, in North West Frontier Province, about 90 kilometers (60 miles) from the frontier.

Such exercises are a sensitive issue in Pakistan as the government forbids American troops to undertake offensive operations on its soil. More than 18,000 U.S. forces are based in Afghanistan and transgressions of the poorly marked border have sparked diplomatic complaints and street protests in Pakistan.

The frontier region has been the suspected hiding place of bin Laden and his top deputy Ayman al-Zawahri since the U.S.-led military ouster of their Taliban hosts from power in Afghanistan in late 2001.

Pakistan's Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said Monday Pakistan had no information on where bin Laden might be, despite a new audio tape purportedly from the al-Qaida leader.

Sherpao refused to comment on the tape, broadcast Sunday by Arab news network Al-Jazeera, in which bin Laden issued new threats and accused the United States and Europe of supporting a "Zionist" war on Islam by cutting off funds to the Hamas-led Palestinian government.

Sherpao told The Associated Press that Pakistan's counterterrorism efforts were focussed not just on trapping bin Laden, but to "curb terrorism in all its forms and manifestations."

"We have no information on his whereabouts," the minister said, adding that he would not speculate on bin Laden's presence at the border "unless we get credible information."

Pakistan - a key U.S. ally in the war against terrorism - has deployed about 80,000 troops to its border tribal regions to track down militants and says it has arrested more than 700 al-Qaida suspects. Most of the top figures it has captured, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, were trapped in major cities.

But Pakistani security officials have told AP that a couple of years ago, Pakistan came close to capturing bin Laden - who has a US$25 million U.S. government reward on his head - in the volatile border region of Waziristan, missing him only by a few hours.

That trail appears to have run cold, but there have been other recent successes.

On April 12, Pakistan claimed it killed an Egyptian al-Qaida operative, Mohsin Musa Matawalli Atwah, 45, who was on the FBI's list of most-wanted terrorists for alleged involvement in 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed more than 200 people, including 12 Americans.

Last week, the government said it killed a senior Syrian operative, Marwan Hadid al-Suri, 38, alleged to be behind attacks on U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan and against Pakistan's security forces. Officials also said he was linked to the al-Qaida No. 2, al-Zawahri.

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