A terrorist plot by Muslim radicals that a prompted series of weekend arrests near Toronto, Canada, posed no threat to American interests, US and Canadian officials have said.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told CBS' Face the Nation on Sunday that the arrests in Canada of 17 people and the seizure of 3 tons of explosive material did not indicate an imminent threat of an attack on the United States.

Michael Wilson, Canada's ambassador to the United States, said on CNN's Late Edition that there were no targets in the United States, "either buildings or people."

But some of the Canadian suspects met last year with two Americans now facing prosecution on separate terrorism-related charges, Monday's edition of the USA Today newspaper quoted the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as saying.

Some of the Canadian suspects had been in contact with two Muslim men who were arrested this year by the bureau's Joint Terrorism Task Force, the FBI said.

The two, now being detained and awaiting trial, were US citizens who had been living in Georgia, the USA Today report said.

One of them, Syed Haris Ahmed, a mechanical engineering student at Georgia Tech, was indicted in Atlanta in March on charges of providing "material support for terrorism."

The Canadian suspects, all citizens or legal residents of the country who were arrested late on Friday and early on Saturday in Toronto's suburbs, allegedly planned to use explosives against targets in Ontario, Canada's most populous province, the report quoted Canadian officials as saying.

Security at the border between New England of the United States and Canada has been tightened since last week, the report said.

Source: Xinhua