Since the early days of the "war on terror", officials have regarded the barren, ochre mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan as the most likely refuge for the Al-Qaeda chief and his number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

With the world's attention focused on Iraq for much of the last three years, the wild region was somewhat forgotten along with the ongoing troubles in Afghanistan -- until now.

Four Al-Qaeda militants are said to have been killed by a CIA Predator drone raid on the remote Pakistani tribal agency of Bajur, reportedly including Zawahiri's son-in-law and a bomber on the US most wanted list.

Officials said Zawahiri stayed away, but the likelihood that such a cabal was in the same area four years after the September 11 attacks suggests that Washington is still on the right track, analysts said.

The release of bin Laden's first recording in over a year may be an attempt by Al-Qaeda to demonstrate that it has not been weakened by the attack, said Rahimullah Yousafzai, a Pakistan-based expert on Afghan affairs.

"The timing of the tape seems to be linked with the Bajur incident," Yousafzai told AFP. "They were waiting for a proper time. Bin Laden wanted to tell Americans that not only Zawahiri but he was also alive."

Many officials believe bin Laden was trapped late in 2001 by the ferocious US bombing of the Tora Bora cave complex in eastern Afghanistan following the fall of his backers, the fundamentalist Taliban regime.

But he is thought to have slipped out of the region, most likely across the porous border with Pakistan just a few miles away.

Since then bin Laden and his acolytes have relied on support from the tribesmen in Pakistan's semi-autonomous border regions -- who so far have not been tempted by the 25 million dollar US reward on the Saudi's head.

Intelligence agencies scrutinised the handful of video and audio tapes he released in that time for clues to his whereabouts, until they dried up last year and were replaced by recordings of Zawahiri.

Meanwhile Pakistan pushed around 70,000 troops into the tribal areas on its side while the 20,000-strong US-led military in Afghanistan pursued the hunt across the border.

In 2004 Pakistan launched an offensive in the South Waziristan region, killing hundreds of foreign militants and their local backers and losing around 250 troops, while last year it targeted North Waziristan.

President Pervez Musharraf said in September that Pakistani authorities one year earlier "had some identification of a rough area where he was, through technical means, but then we lost him."

The hunt seemed to step up in recent months. US counter-terrorism coordinator Henry Crumpton said on Tuesday that bin Laden was believed to be alive somewhere in the frontier zone despite his silence.

A US counter-terrorism official told AFP in September that elite US Delta Force and Navy SEAL units were coming back to Afghanistan after tours of duty in Iraq.

US agents based in Afghanistan had also made reconnaissance raids into South and North Waziristan, and all the way up to Bajur and the northern areas, the official said.

Four months later the US made its most spectacular cross-border incursion yet with its airstrike on Damadola village.

"If they are present in this area of the airstrike they would be nervous," Yousfzai said. "They would be concerned that action had started in Bajur after South and North Waziristan. They must have moved to some other area."

Pakistan lodged a formal protest after 18 civilians were reportedly killed in the airstrike, highlighting the continual danger that Washington's war on terror might alienate its closest allies even as bin Laden remains on the run.

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