News

The order came from the mountains of North Waziristan, the bleak, lawless tribal area of Pakistan which borders Afghanistan, where the leaders of Al Qaeda have spent the past five years hiding, rebuilding and planning their next atrocities.

It was given by the leader, known to his followers as The Sheik  -  a tall, slender figure with long beard and soft brown eyes  -  whose ruthless tactics had become known, and feared, the whole world over.

The plan was made possible by the 40kg of enriched, weapons-grade uranium 235 that The Sheik's most trusted associates had bought, at a cost of $150 million, with the profits of the opium trade that was flourishing once more.

This week the Government's terrorism adviser, Lord Carlile QC, warned there was 'real anxiety' that private jets might be used as 'vehicle bombs' in terrorist attacks on Britain

As for the origins of 'the cargo', there was dispute even among the best-informed rumour-mongers of Waziristan.

Some said the uranium had come from the Iranian nuclear plant at Natanz. Others believed it was from North Korea, or even dissident elements in the Russian Federation.

Whatever the source, though, the outcome was the same.

The 'real and imminent' threat to which Mohammed al Baradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, had alerted the world in June 2004, had finally come true.

Al Qaeda had acquired the means, and the technical know-how, to build a crude, simple, but brutally effective nuclear bomb.

And now they intended to deliver it.

Before the bomb had even been completed, rumours of its existence had reached MI6, and been considered, analysed and then dismissed.

This was to prove a catastrophically foolhardy decision, but it was not an irrational one.

Rumours of rogue nukes had been doing the rounds for almost 20 years since the breakup of the old Soviet Union. Yet no bomb had ever been uncovered, let alone detonated.

For policy makers, forced to work with limited resources, the key consideration was the balance of probability.

And the most probable scenarios, in terms of attacks on the UK mainland, involved disaffected British citizens, using conventional weapons, delivered by groundbased vehicles.

Dozens of white Europeans have trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan's tribal regions in recent months, U.S. intelligence sources tell ABC News, in what officials fear may be the beginnings of a new breed of al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorism.

Government officials suspect the terrorists, recruited in Europe, have been dispatched to plan attacks against Europe and possibly the United States. The alleged terrorists hail from Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Romania and Estonia, sources said.

An April 2008 report from Europol also noted that an increasing number of European nationals attended training in Pakistan "and were later involved in, or suspected of, terrorist offences in the EU."

Intelligence officials say the remote tribal areas along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan have in the last several years become a haven for terrorist recruiting and training. Hundreds of radicals from across the region have flocked to al-Qaeda training camps in the area.

In interviews with ABC News and in a series of little-noticed public statements and reports, intelligence officials have said they believe al-Qaeda has successfully completed a major goal: recruiting and training Western would-be terrorists.

"Al-Qa'ida is improving the last key aspect of its ability to attack the U.S.: the identification, training and positioning of operatives for an attack in the Homeland," according to a February Threat Assessment report from the Director of National Intelligence.

"[W]e have seen an influx of new Western recruits into the tribal area since mid-2006," the report said.

The editorial, published on Wednesday, called the accused in the Thane theatre blast case "fools" for the shoddy manner in which the blast was carried out.

"When we heard that Hindus have been making bombs, we were happy. But we felt ashamed when we read that the blast injured were Hindus," said the editorial, triggering angry reactions from other political parties. The editorial even suggested that the accused could take tips from Islamic terrorists in this matter.

The Sena will celebrate its 42nd Foundation Day on Thursday.

The Congress has demanded the arrest of Saamna editor and Sena Chief Bal Thackeray. Deputy Chief Minister RR Patil said the police would go through the editorial and decide if action could be taken against the paper and its editors.

Criticising the comments, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday advised its ally to respect the law. "People should not take law into their hands. It is the duty of the government to counter terror," BJP Vice President Venkaiah Naidu said.

Four men were arrested for planting a crude bomb at auditoriums in Thane and Vashi to protest against the Marathi play Amhi Pachpute. The accused later told the police that they were members of Hindu organisations Janjagruti Samiti and Sanatan Sanstha, and were angry as the play insulted Hindu gods.

While the police defused the bomb planted at the Vashi auditorium, seven people were injured in Thane where the bomb had been planted in the parking lot.

"We have arrested suspected suicide bombers," said Rao Iqbal police chief of Rawalpindi, according to the same source. "We have recovered three vehicles with a large quantity of explosives from the Dhok Kala Khan area," he added.

It appears that the security forces found several explosives, which amounted to nearly 500 kilograms.

"It was a major terrorist plot aimed at causing death and destruction in the twin cities," a senior security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Al-Qaeda claimed in an Internet statement Wednesday to have carried out the attack on the Danish mission as a revenge for the publication in Danish newspapers of the controversial cartoons insulting Islam's Prophet Mohammed.

Security in the capital was tightest along Constitution Avenue the broad duel carriageway leading to the presidency building, National Assembly, Supreme Court, various ministries and the diplomatic enclave where many embassies are located.

The city of Rawalpindi lies 12km (seven miles) south of the capital of Islamabad and is the headquarters of Pakistan's military. It also houses the residence of President Pervez Musharraf.

Authorities say such installations may have been the target of the planned sucide bomb attacks.

Source: enews20.comPakistan Foils `Terror Plot'

The huge blast badly damaged 15 houses in the north Baghdad neighborhood of Shaab, killing 18 civilians and wounding 29, according to the U.S. military. Iraqi police put the death toll at 13 and said 52 people were injured.

Police said four civilians were killed and nine people, including three policemen, were wounded when a parked car bomb targeting a police patrol exploded near a restaurant in the mainly Shi'ite Jadriya neighborhood of southern Baghdad.

Elsewhere, gunmen killed three American soldiers in the Sunni Arab town of Hawija, 210 km (130 miles) north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

A roadside bomb struck an army and police convoy, killing two policemen and one soldier and wounding four policemen near Falluja, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad, police said.

The Iraqi police said a suicide bomber detonated the truck bomb near the house of a senior police officer, Brigadier-General Nadhim Taeih, in the mainly Shi'ite Baghdad suburb of Shaab.

Taeih was not at home but his nephew was killed and his father was seriously wounded in the blast, police sources said

Osama bin Laden, Mr. Chertoff said, has made it clear that scaring the United States into an unsustainable spending spree is one of his aims. In a 2004 video, Mr. bin Laden, the Qaeda leader, spoke of “bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.” “He understood that one tool he had in waging war against the United States was to drive us crazy, into bankruptcy, trying to defend ourselves against every conceivable threat,” Mr. Chertoff said at a hearing of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

“We have to be realistic about what we expect and what we do. We do have limits, and we do have choices to make.” “I put my daughter in my car,” Mr. Chertoff told Mr. Lautenberg. “If I wanted my daughter to be 100 percent safe, I’d put a five-mile-an-hour speed limit cap on the car.” But that is not an option, he added, “because that’s more safety than we can afford.” The list of initiatives cannot be limitless, Mr. Chertoff said. A mandate, for example, that every cargo container headed into the United States be X-rayed and subject to a radiation scan before it leaves a foreign port to search for a possible nuclear bomb is not now feasible, he said. Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, was trying on Tuesday to persuade him to consider such an effort.

The direct reference to Mr. bin Laden echoes what is now a week’s worth of tough talk by the Bush administration about him, a move Democrats call a politically motivated effort to refocus the nation, and its voters, on the war on terror instead of the troubled conflict in Iraq. Mr. Chertoff said his message was not political, but simply a recognition of reality and the tough choices he must make.

In the second part of his interview to Rediff India Abroad Managing Editor [Features] Arthur J Pais, he also says Musharraf in a way exploits the Muslim extremists' presence in Pakistan to gain American support for his regime.

In his new book The Age of Fallibility, he discusses how the open society in America has been endangered in the last five years and lays greater blame on President Bush and less on the 9/11 terrorists.

'By declaring war on terror, he (Bush) suspended the critical mode of thinking that is at the core of an open society,' Soros writes in his new book. 'Criticism of the President's policies was denounced as unpatriotic. Congress passed the USA Patriotic Act without even having time to read it.'

HIZBUL Mujahideen chief commander Syed Salahuddin favours self-rule to resolve the Kashmir dispute, but says it wouldn't be possible without complete demilitarisation.

In an exclusive telephone interview with The Indian Express from Muzaffarabad in Pakistan occupied Kashmir, Salahuddin one of India's most wanted Kashmiri militants explained that demilitarisation means, as President Musharraf puts it, both Pakistan and India call back their forces from all regions of Jammu and Kashmir''. He says ceasefire will not be a problem if the Government of India releases all innocent people in jails, stops its operations and takes the Army to a pre-1989 position.

On Al-Qaeda in Kashmir?
I say with full authority that it is purely a disinformation campaign. Al-Qaeda neither has any role in Kashmir nor any target. I can say with full confidence that they are not present in Kashmir. After the Mumbai serial blast, Indian agencies are misguiding the international community, especially the US, to get their support and malign our legitimate movement.

On London blasts and the Kashmir link?
As far as I know, nobody has related it (London Blasts) to Kashmir and it has nothing to do with Kashmir. It has been said that the people who were involved in the plot and who were arrested were of Pakistani origin and were supported by Pakistanis.

On accusations of diversion of quake relief funds
This is a disinformation campaign. Be it the London blasts or the Mumbai blasts, the Government of India is trying to relate it to Kashmir so that it can malign our movement.

Al-Zarqawi’s group has claimed responsibility for some of the bloodiest attacks against U.S. forces and Iraqi officials. He was publicly appointed by al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden as his deputy in Iraq last year.

The speaker, who made a reference that suggested the tape was recorded in late March, identified himself as Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and said that the holy war, or jihad, was still being waged vigorously two years after the U.S. invasion.