PARIS — Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy of France announced yesterday that the founder of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, was alive, after a newspaper report citing French intelligence claimed that he died in Pakistan about a month ago.

“To my knowledge, Osama bin Laden is not dead. It is quite simple,” Mr. Douste-Blazy told French television. “It’s the truth,” he said.

President Chirac of France had said earlier that the newspaper claim, that Mr. bin Laden might have died of typhoid in a hideout in Pakistan, was “in no way confirmed.”

He added that he was “surprised” that the provincial newspaper, l’Est Republicain, had published an excerpt from a French secret-service note relaying information from Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service.

The president angrily launched an immediate inquiry by his defense ministry into how the intelligence report was leaked. The memo, from the French intelligence agency General Directorate for External Security, quoted a “normally reliable” source as saying Saudi intelligence was convinced that Mr. bin Laden was dead.

It added that the Qaeda leader, a Saudi citizen, died in Pakistan from typhoid fever, which had led to “partial paralysis of his internal organs,” between August 23 and September 4.

France made no attempt to challenge the authenticity of the document, but Mr. Chirac said the information that it contained had not been confirmed. He expressed surprise at the way it had been leaked.

The Saudi Embassy in Washington later issued a statement casting doubt on the report, but stopped short of saying it is untrue. It said Saudi Arabia has “no evidence to support recent media report reports that Osama bin Laden is dead.”

“Information that has been reported otherwise is purely speculative and cannot be independently verified.”

Both Secretary of State Rice and the Pakistani interior minister, Aftab Sherpato, said they had no knowledge of Mr. bin Laden’s supposed death.