American and Pakistani intelligence units have begun an operation in the northern most district of the country, along the border with Afghanistan, in the hopes of capturing Osama bin Laden, Pakistan officials said today. Further south, police in Baluchistan have been told to prepare for a possible operation, officials said. “They are hitting at two possible places in search of Osama,” a Pakistani intelligence officer said. The stepped-up activity follows the arrest last Saturday of one of Mr. Bin Laden’s top deputies, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In a laptop computer, hand-written letters and notes, and computer disks seized during Mr. Mohammed’s capture, along with cellular telephones and satellite phones, was information that has lead American and Pakistani authorities to believe they have a better chance now of capturing the Al Qaeda leader, who many have thought was dead. A Pakistani government spokesman, Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi, categorically denied today that there had been any significant step-up in the search for Mr. bin Laden since Mr. Mohammed’s arrest. “Nonsense, nonsense,” Mr. Qureshi said about reports that American and Pakistani forces were working together to find Mr. bin Laden. Not only were American special forces not “pouring in,” as some news reports have said, but they were not even “drip, drip, drip, dripping in.” Full Story