Bin Laden tape will trigger assassination, say US sources

WASHINGTON - A high-profile political assassination, triggered by a new taped message from Osama bin Laden, will start the next major al Qaeda attack, American intelligence officials say.

Quoting officials who spoke on condition that they were not identified, the Washington Times said the assassination plan would target an American or foreign leader either in the US or abroad.

Planning for the attacks to follow involved "multiple targets in multiple venues" across the United States, one official was quoted as saying.

"The goal of the next attack is twofold - to damage the US economy and to undermine the US election."

The officials said intelligence reports, some of them sketchy, suggested that a new taped message from bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader, would surface soon.

"The message likely will be the signal for the attack to be launched," one official said.

Another said one intelligence agency knew of reports of a new bin Laden tape.

"There may be such a tape, but it hasn't surfaced and we haven't seen it," he said.

The Pentagon has urged Congress to authorise US$500 million ($776 million) to build a worldwide anti-terrorist network of friendly militias.

Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a leading architect of the Iraq war, told the House Armed Services Committee the money would be used "for training and equipping local security forces - not just armies - to counter terrorism and insurgencies".

If approved as part of a larger defence bill, the money would "provide greater internal security in areas that are or could become sanctuaries for terrorists", he said.

No specific beneficiaries were named, but American officials have repeatedly expressed concern about vast tracts of land along the Afghan-Pakistani border, in Iraq, the Caucasus, the Horn of Africa and islands in the Philippines where radical Islamic fighters could set up shop.

The strategy has been used in Afghanistan, where US special forces forged alliances with local warlords, who became instrumental in bringing down the Taleban government in 2001 and then keeping its remnants at bay.

"Indeed, our most important allies in the war on terrorism will be Muslims who seek freedom and oppose extremism," Wolfowitz stated.

Top Defence Department and other Administration officials are working to develop new forms of "asymmetrical" warfare that would be more effective against small terrorist cells.

The "new" warfare would also spare the US the need to have large contingents of its own forces around the world.

Addressing the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations last week, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said American defence planners had to adjust to not having to confront the big foreign armies, navies and air forces it was originally trained to fight.

"There are not a lot of them around at the moment," Rumsfeld said. "And we've got manhunts going on."

Defence officials said that to help establish contact with local chieftains, the Pentagon was considering hiring immigrants to serve as "bicultural advisers" in unfamiliar areas of the world and implementing several economic aid projects there.


- REUTERS, AGENCIES