800 agents of al-Qaida ready to strike again

The United Nations will issue a report next week showing Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida militant network has some 800 members ready to strike economic or tourist targets, a French consultant to the report said yesterday.

Roland Jacquard, head of the International Observatory on Terrorism, said bin Laden sent them from Afghanistan before US-led forces toppled Kabul’s Taliban leadership.

The Washington Post reported on Sunday that the report would show that United Nations travel and arms sanctions on members of the al-Qaida network had not succeeded in capturing a single suspect person or weapon crossing international borders.

“The report of the UN Security Council ... which will appear next week, will show that a third generation of al-Qaida is forming,” Jacquard told France 2 television.

It would show “that before September 11, Osama bin Laden anticipated the American attack and sent out about 800 fighters from Afghanistan, all top officers of al-Qaida.

Jacquard said it was becoming increasingly difficult for intelligence services to track these al-Qaida members.

He said they had apparently picked economic and tourist sites as their next targets.

Thailand had recently arrested suspected militants in possession of the radioactive material caesium, he said.

“If they had mixed this with any kind of explosive, that would have produced one of those famous ‘dirty bombs’ the Americans are so afraid of,” he added.

Al-Qaida, which is blamed for the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States, is also suspected of links to recent suicide bombings in the Saudi Arabian city of Riyadh and in Casablanca, Morocco.