WASHINGTON — As the White House prepares for a trilateral meeting this week with two of its most important allies in the war on terror, Pakistan and Afghanistan, those countries’ leaders are sniping about the whereabouts of their common enemy, Osama bin Laden.

In a memoir that was released yesterday, “In the Line of Fire,” President Musharraf of Pakistan suggests that the leader of Al Qaeda is still in Afghanistan. “The fact that so many Saudis are in the Kunar area perhaps suggests that this is where Osama bin Laden has his hideout, but we cannot be sure,” he writes in the new book, published by Free Press.

But over the weekend, President Karzai of Afghanistan said Mr. bin Laden could be in the border region of Pakistan, but that he is definitely not in Afghanistan. “He is not in Afghanistan. I can tell you that for sure,” Mr. Karzai said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

The Afghan leader then suggested that Mr. bin Laden is in Quetta, Pakistan. The Taliban warlord, Mullah Omar, is believed to be living there.

In his memoir, General Musharraf said the idea that Mr. Omar is running an insurgency from Quetta is “ridiculous.”

The bickering over the whereabouts of the world’s most wanted terrorist comes after press reports over the weekend citing Saudi intelligence sources that said Mr. bin Laden is dead. American intelligence officials have denied the reports, first published in the French press.

For the White House, the meeting on Thursday with Mr. Karzai and General Musharraf will focus on the more pressing matter of the resurgence of the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. This issue is of particular concern for Mr. Karzai in light of this month’s deal between tribal warlords and the Pakistani military in northern Waziristan.

That deal, according to press reports and intelligence officials here, gives members of the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan until October 2001, free rein in the border province so long as the group ends its attacks on Pakistani military targets. As part of the agreement, Pakistan released more than 1,000 prisoners this month from prisons throughout the country, some of whom American intelligence officials believe were high-value targets affiliated with Al Qaeda.

So far, the Waziristan agreement has not boded well for Mr. Karzai’s fight against the Taliban, he said Sunday. “Unfortunately, right after the signing of the agreement, we saw that two tribal chiefs in Pakistan were killed in that area by the terrorists, by the Taliban. And an Afghan governor in the neighborhood of that area was assassinated, killed by a suicide bomber. So the trend since then is not good. But we will have to wait and see as to whether the truce as it is agreed upon is going to be implemented, or will be violated,” he said.

However, at a press conference with General Musharraf on Friday, President Bush said he is satisfied with the tribal agreement.”When the president looks me in the eye and says, ‘The tribal deal is intended to reject the Talibanization of the people,’ and that there won’t be a Taliban and won’t be Al Qaeda, I believe him,” Mr. Bush said.

Nonetheless, an American intelligence official pointed out yesterday that General Musharraf’s promises on the Waziristan accord do not match the reality on the ground. “We have raised serious concerns about the prisoner release. But we also want to know about the training camps there. As far as we know, this deal would leave these things standing,” the official, who requested anonymity, said.

The upcoming trilateral meeting of Mr. Bush, General Musharraf, and Mr. Karzai could focus on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, a spokesman for the National Security Council, Frederick Jones, told The New York Sun.

“We will talk about working cooperatively to control the border areas and fight against the common enemy of the Taliban, and also to combat terror in a broader sense in both lands, and how we can all work together cooperatively to defeat the enemy,” Mr. Jones said.

Mr. Karzai is scheduled to meet separately with Mr. Bush today at the White House.