Message #197907

[Myra]

"Some time ago, the Embassy of Saudi Arabia informed us that one of the daughters of Bin Laden is in the embassy," Mottaki said. "We don't know how this person went to the embassy or how she entered the country."

Mottaki made no mention of the other Bin Laden children and he was not asked on the TV program whether Iran was holding them.

Osama bin Laden reportedly has 19 children by several wives. He took at least one of his wives and their children with him to Afghanistan in the late 1990s after he was thrown out of his previous refuge, Sudan. They fled when the U.S.-led war erupted, including the group that tried to escape through Iran.

This year, U.S. officials said Saad bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader's eldest son, may have been killed by a U.S. airstrike in Pakistan, where they said he may have fled after being freed from Iran, but they could not confirm the information.

In an e-mail to The Associated Press on Thursday, Omar bin Laden, another son who lives abroad, appealed to the Iranian government to let his family there be reunited with their relatives in Saudi Arabia, Syria or Qatar. He said the Iranian government took good care of his family, providing them with all their needs and keeping them in a walled compound for protection.

He said the bin Laden children known to remain in the compound were sons Mohammed, Hamza, Othman and Bakr and daughter Fatima. Also there are 25 other relatives, including their spouses and their children.