There' still time to placer your bet and enter the pool as to which city will be the first one hit with nuclear weapons.

Personally, I think bin Laden was swindled by some Russian mafia guys here, but there's no question he has been shopping carrying about $300 million of his own money and another couple hundred million of Afghan heroin money in his pocket. I hope that someday we don't have to look back and say that Bush made a mistake in not taking care of this guy before he went into Iraq.

Saturday November 10 12:09 PM ET
Bin Laden Claims to Have Nuclear Arms
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By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, Associated Press Writer

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Terror suspect Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) claims he has nuclear and chemical weapons and will unleash them if the United States uses similar weapons against him, according to an interview published Saturday in one of Pakistan's largest newspapers.

``I wish to declare that if America used chemical and nuclear weapons against us, then we may retort with chemical and nuclear weapons. We have the weapons as a deterrent,'' the Dawn newspaper quoted bin Laden as saying in an interview near the Afghan capital Kabul on Wednesday night.

The United States, which is bombing positions of Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s ruling Taliban and bin Laden's al-Qaida network, says it has no evidence that bin Laden possesses nuclear weapons. Intelligence experts, however, believe his fighters have experimented with crude chemical weapons at a training camp in Afghanistan.

``They're seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons,'' President Bush (news - web sites) said in Washington on Friday. ``Given the means, our enemies would be a threat to every nation and, eventually, to civilization itself.''

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) said the United States had ``no credible evidence at this point of a specific threat of that kind.''

In London, a spokesman for the British Foreign Office said ``we know that he was looking for that capability'' but added ``we believe he does not have it.'' The spokesman made his comments on traditional condition of anonymity.

``Of course, we take these reports very seriously,'' the British spokesman added.

Hamid Mir, a Pakistani journalist sympathetic to the Taliban and bin Laden's biographer, conducted the Dawn interview. He said he asked bin Laden where he allegedly got the weapons. ``Go to the next question,'' bin Laden replied.

Mir said the interview was conducted at an ``undisclosed location'' near Kabul.

Mir said he was blindfolded and driven in a jeep from Kabul on Wednesday night to a very cold place where he could hear the sound of anti-aircraft fire.

Bin Laden eventually arrived, accompanied by a dozen bodyguards and his deputy Ayman el-Zawahri.

The Dawn published a photograph of Mir sitting indoors with bin Laden on cushions on the floor against a brown backdrop. Bin Laden wore a white turban and scarf with a camouflage jacket. A Kalashnikov rifle lay at his side.

The story was also published Saturday in Ausaf, a Pakistani Urdu-language newspaper that he edits. The Urdu version did not include the claim about having nuclear weapons but the newspaper said another portion of the interview would be published Sunday.