10 months ago, but had since lost track of him.

"Through interrogation of those who have been captured, the al-Qaida members who were apprehended here, and through technical means there was a time when the dragnet had closed," Musharraf told the British Broadcasting Corp. in an interview.

"We thought we knew roughly the area where he possibly could be. That was I think ... not very long (ago), maybe about 10 months back," said Musharraf, a close ally of the United States.

The BBC quoted Musharraf as saying his forces had since lost track of bin Laden's possible whereabouts.

U.S. commander plays down failure Meantime, the new operational commander for U.S. troops in Afghanistan played down the unsuccessful hunt, saying that bolstering the re-emerging government of President Hamid Karzai was their immediate priority.

Maj. Gen. Jason Kamiya took command of the 18,000-strong U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan on Tuesday as American troops based in Europe rotate into the country ahead of parliamentary elections expected in September.

"We will continue to focus our energy, number one, on supporting the government of Afghanistan's vision," Kamiya told reporters at Bagram Air Field, north of Kabul. "We have the election coming up ... and that will be one of our major focuses."

"The success of this mission should not be predicated upon the amount of fugitives or threat groups we remove," Kamiya said.

"Instead it should be focused on increasing the capacity, increasing the reach of the Afghan central government."

Kamiya, the commander of the Vicenza, Italy-based Southern European Task Force (Airborne), relieved Maj. Gen. Eric Olson of the Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division at a ceremony in an aircraft hangar attended also by the overall U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Barno.

'We will be successful eventually' Barno, for his part, said at a news conference that there were no leads into bin Laden's whereabouts.

"We don't know where he is. If we had a good definition we'd obviously have apprehended him," Barno said of the al-Qaida leader, who some analysts suspect may be hiding near the rugged border with Pakistan.

"We will be successful eventually, but it is a very, very difficult challenge given the immensity of the territory involved, the mountainous terrain, the tough weather," Barno said.

Barno, who is also expected to leave Afghanistan soon, suggested that the insurgency maintained by Taliban-led militants since U.S. and allied Afghan forces ousted the hard-line militia in late 2001 was losing steam.

February saw the lowest level of attacks for two years and a mooted reconciliation plan could blunt the challenge from militants further, he said, while cautioning that violence will likely increase as winter fades.

Hunt for foreign fighters On Sunday, Pakistani officials said the country's security forces had mounted a search for suspected al-Qaida foreign fighters in a tribal area near the Afghan border. Ten men were detained for questioning.

Last week, Pakistani soldiers killed two foreign al-Qaida suspects.

Pakistani officials say security forces killed or arrested hundreds of al-Qaida foreign fighters and their local supporters in operations in the South Waziristan region last year.

But they say about 100 are still hiding in the mountainous area and that others have moved into the North Waziristan region.

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