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LONDON - Al Qaeda is trying to get the technology that would let it use a nuclear bomb on Western targets, a senior British official said yesterday.
"We know the aspiration is there. We know attempts to gather materials are there, we know that attempts to gather technology are there," the senior Foreign Office official said at a briefing.
The comments came days after the head of Britain's domestic spy agency said Muslim extremists were plotting at least 30 major terrorist attacks in Britain that could involve chemical and nuclear devices.
Asked whether there was any doubt that al Qaeda wanted to use nuclear material against Western targets, the Foreign Office official said: "No doubt at all."
Eliza Manningham-Buller, head of intelligence agency MI5, said last week young British Muslims were being groomed to become suicide bombers and her agents were tracking around 1600 suspects, most of whom were British-born and linked to al Qaeda.
Britain suffered its worst peacetime attack in July last year when four suicide bombers blew themselves up on London's transport network, killing 52 and wounding hundreds.
This month Dhiren Barot, 34, was jailed for at least 40 years for plotting to blow up the New York Stock Exchange and carry out attacks in Britain with gas-filled limousines and a "dirty bomb".
In a separate terrorism trial, prosecutors said one of the suspects had told police that his superior in a Pakistan training camp had asked him to help contact the Russian mafia about buying a nuclear bomb.
However, Salahuddin Amin, accused of plotting conventional bomb attacks in Britain, said he did not believe it was a genuine plot and nothing appeared to have developed from it.
Prime Minister Tony Blair will focus on the fight against terrorism in the last package of laws of his premiership, in a programme to be read to Parliament tomorrow by the Queen.
- REUTERS
