Foreign secretary Jack Straw has said Osama bin Laden as psychotic and his cult of personality is similar to that which surrounded Hitler.

Straw told the Times on Tuesday that bin Laden "will get caught in the end" but also cautioned that killing or capturing him would not prevent further acts of terrorism being carried out by the al Qaeda network

The minister also said he was working on the basis that terrorist cells operating as part of the al Qaeda network would continue for a period after the destruction of the infrastructure in Afghanistan.

The interview came ahead of Straw's address next weekend to the United Nations general assembly, where he will says the UN's time has now come and call on the organisation to play an enhance role in deciding the future of Afghanistan.

Referring to the video of bin Laden released at the weekend in which he claimed that the United Nations was working against Muslims, Straw told the Times it showed a "degree of hatred of humankind that is impossible to avoid".

Emphasising that the West is not conducting a war against terrorism, Straw said bin Laden's religion is not Islam. "His religion is terrorism. It is the religion of terrorism with which we are in conflict."

On bin Laden's state of mind, Straw says he is psychotic and paranoid. "Those words exist to describe people like this - their complete detachment from the suffering of others and their absolute faith, conviction and obsession with the rightness of what they are saying."