THE CIA launched a secret attempt to have suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden captured or killed three years ago, it was revealed yesterday.

But in spite of trying to use anti-Taliban fighters in northern Afghanistan to find the leader of terrorist organisation Al Quaida, US intelligence still cannot pinpoint bin Laden's whereabouts today.

The revelations came in the New York Times and Washington Post newspapers in the wake of September 11's terror attacks after which bin Laden became the prime suspect.

The New York Times reported the CIA had deployed operatives three years ago to the north of Afghanistan, held by the Northern Alliance, who are opponents of the fundamentalist Taliban regime, which yesterday said it had bin Laden under its control.

In a secret operation, the CIA officers tried to persuade Ahmed Shah Massoud, the military leader of the Northern Alliance, to find and capture, or kill bin Laden.

The move was part of an effort by the Clinton administration to track down and destroy bin Laden's Al Quaida network.

But it was unclear whether Massoud, who died shortly after the September 11 attacks in a suicide bombing widely suspected to have been ordered by bin Laden, ever attempted to find the Al Quaida leader.

CIA insiders told the New York Times they opened talks with Massoud in his stronghold in the north and promised him and his fighters large sums of money if they could find a way to get bin Laden.

The move followed the most direct attack on bin Laden, when in August 1998 US Cruise missiles were launched at a camp where the leader was believed to be, but which he had left an hour before they landed.

They were ordered by then president Bill Clinton after the June 1998 twin bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

But they prompted bin Laden to realise his communications were being intercepted - including his satellite phone calls to his mother, tapes of which the National Security Agency once played to visitors.

One former official said, "He became much more secure in his communications and the only way to track him was to have people on the ground."