Iran says it can't confirm identity of Osama bin Laden's daughter

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Thursday that Iran could not confirm whether the woman in the Saudi Arabia embassy in Tehran was the daughter of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

"We have been informed by the Saudi embassy in Tehran that thedaughter of bin Laden was in the embassy and intended to leave the country," Mottaki told state television.

"We can, however, neither confirm her identity nor do we know how she entered the country and the Saudi embassy," the Iranian chief diplomat said.

He said that according to internationally acknowledged regulations, the woman should present her legal identity documents to the immigration department before being allowed to leave the country.

According to the Saudi embassy, only bin Laden's daughter, and no other family member, was there.

Meanwhile, the mother of several of bin Laden's children pleaded with Iran to release six of them, according to a report in Saudi daily al-Sharq al-Awsat on Thursday.

Najwa al-Ghanem, Bin Laden's first wife, said she misses her children and wished Iran would let them return to Saudi Arabia.

The newspaper had reported Wednesday that al-Ghanem's daughter, Iman, had been at the Saudi Embassy in Tehran for three weeks and had asked to be allowed to leave the country.

The report said Iman spoke with her brother, Abdullah, in Saudi Arabia, and said that she and five of her brothers, along with another of their father's wives, a woman identified only as Umm Hamza, have been held by Iranian authorities since the US-led

invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

The bin Laden family said they had no news of the whereabouts of the missing members since late 2001. The family was believed to have been in Afghanistan before the Sep 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.

The London Times reported that the family walked to the Iranian border and were then were taken to a walled compound outside Tehran, where guards said they were not allowed to leave "for their ownsafety".

Family members quoted by the Times said that while they thanked Iran for taking in their relatives, they would now like them to be allowed to rejoin the rest of the bin Ladens.

Last updated on Dec 25^th, 2009 at 07:35 am IST--DPA