Leaders of Afghanistan's radical Taliban movement, who have been sheltering the alleged terrorist since 1996, reported Saturday that Bin Laden had disappeared.

The whereabouts of Bin Laden, who has been living in a network of fortified caves in southeastern Afghanistan, remained unknown late Saturday. Diplomatic officials here speculated that he may have fled to Iraq, which reportedly offered the Saudi dissident a haven earlier this month.

"Osama bin Laden has gone missing," the supreme Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, said Saturday from Kandahar, Afghanistan. "We did not order him to leave . . . but we do not know where he is."