Anti-Taliban leader assassination 'plotted by bin Laden network'

The only survivor of last month's suicide bombing that killed the anti-Taliban leader says the attack was plotted by Osama bin Laden's network.

Massood Khalili, ambassador to India for the Afghanistan exile government, has described the September 9 assassination of Ahmed Shah Massood.

But he says no definite link had been found to the September 11 attacks in the United States.

Mr Khalili has 400 pieces of shrapnel in one leg, the other has 70% burns, his hearing and eyesight are gone on his right side and his hands are burned.

He says the bombing was carried out by two men who said they represented an Islamic organisation in Europe.

Mr Khalili said: "We have sufficient proof of contacts between the bombers and organisations linked to bin Laden". The others involved are not yet known.

After Mr Massood's assassination, his men had said the two killers were posing as TV journalists.

But Mr Khalili says that when he asked them who they worked for, they immediately said they were not journalists, but worked for an Islamic group in London.

Mr Khalili says they had been waiting for 15 days for the interview with Mr Massood, who thought they were journalists.

When they were called into the room where Mr Massood and Mr Khalili sat on a couch, one set up a television camera on a tripod, aimed low, at Mr Massood's chest. The other, acting as the interviewer, sat near Mr Massood, discussing the questions to be asked.

Mr Khalili said he was not suspicious and that Mr Massood himself was "not very much thinking of his safety". As the first question began "there was a boom, a blast".

Asked why the explosives were not found, or the identities of the men not checked during the 15 days they waited to see Massood, Khalili said, "We are not very efficient, I can say, in that matter."