ISLAMABAD/KABUL (Reuters) - Pakistani security forces captured one of the Taliban’s top leaders hours after U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s unannounced visit to Pakistan this week, a senior security official and Taliban sources said.

Pakistani soldiers stand guard on a rooftop in Quetta, September 6, 2006. Pakistani security forces have captured a high-ranking Taliban leader in the southwestern city of Quetta, a senior Pakistani security official and Taliban sources said on Thursday. REUTERS/Athar Hussain

The sources told Reuters that Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, the third most senior member of the Taliban’s leadership council, was arrested late on Monday in the southwestern city of Quetta.

His capture would mark the first Pakistani arrest of a senior leader of the Islamist militia since it was driven from power in Afghanistan in 2001 and thousands of its fighters fled into Pakistan.

The Bush administration is facing a wave of skepticism over Pakistan’s role as an ally in the war on terrorism.

Cheney had asked Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to do more to stop al Qaeda rebuilding from safe havens in Pakistani tribal lands and step up efforts to thwart a spring offensive by the Taliban against Afghan and NATO troops.

The New York Times carried a report on its Web site, saying U.S. officials in Washington had confirmed Akhund’s arrest.

Friday’s edition of Dawn, a leading Pakistani daily, ran a front-page story, again sourced to an unnamed official, with a headline reading: “Mullah Omar’s deputy Obaidullah captured”.

Pakistani government and military spokesmen said they had no knowledge of the arrest.

Taliban sources, speaking on satellite telephones from undisclosed locations, said Akhund was caught at the home of a relative in the Baluchistan provincial capital.

They said two other leaders had been arrested in Quetta this week. Pakistani security officials said five suspects had been detained midweek, but their identities were not confirmed.

Germany’s conservative Die Welt daily, in an advance copy of a story to be published on Saturday, quoted “an observer” as saying Akhund had already been released.

“I have just had coffee with the Mullah,” the observer said.

Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousaf told Afghan Islamic Press, a Pashtun-language news agency based in Peshawar, that it was a false rumor.

At the end of 2006 the Taliban denied for more than a week that a U.S. air strike had killed Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani, a senior commander, before confirming his death.

The Pakistani security official, whose information has proved reliable in the past but insists on anonymity as he is not authorized to speak, said the timing of Akhund’s arrest was coincidence, and not linked to Cheney’s visit.

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Aside from being on the leadership council headed by Mullah Mohammad Omar, Akhund was defense minister in the Taliban government before it fell.

As defense minister, Akhund was believed to have liaised closely with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence during the years when the Taliban ruled in Kabul and could count on Pakistani support.

“He wasn’t a commander, but he and Mullah Beradar were key links to commanders in the field,” Ahmed Rashid, a respected Pakistani journalist and author of “Taliban”, a seminal study of the Islamist militia, commented.

“He was in the shura (council) and very important.”

While Akhund’s capture would represent a major coup, it sits uneasily with Pakistan’s past denials of allegations that Taliban leaders were running the Afghan insurgency from Quetta.

Musharraf said last month that he was “500 percent” sure that Mullah Omar was in Afghanistan, although he admits there are Taliban fighters in Pakistan.

The lack of arrests in the past fed speculation that Pakistani intelligence services or rogue agents have allowed Taliban leaders to operate freely.

Having supported the Taliban prior to al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Pakistan has struggled to shake off suspicions that its spies continue to play a double game in case the West’s commitment to Afghanistan does not last.