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Bush calls urgent meeting on al-Qaida threat |
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09:26, July 12, 2007 |
The White House has called an urgent multi-agency meeting for today to discuss a potential new Al-Qaida threat on US soil, ABC News reported on Tuesday.
Top intelligence and law enforcement officials have been told to meet in the White House Situation Room to report on steps to minimize or counter the threat and what steps are being taken to tighten security at government buildings, ABC said.
The meeting would be one of a number convened in light of new intelligence and information learned from the recent failed car bomb attempts in London, ABC reported, citing a senior US administration official.
The unnamed official told ABC the level of concern of a new attack in the United States was now higher than it had been in some time.
A White House spokeswoman confirmed that after the attempted attacks in the United Kingdom, the US government convened meetings to discuss the situation but added there was no credible evidence of an imminent threat.
"Counter-terrorism officials regularly meet, that is not unusual. We are taking all threats seriously and working to ensure we can keep the terrorists from striking at innocent people," White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore said in an e-mail.
Law enforcement officials said the botched bombings in London provided clues about possible tactics, ABC reported.
ABC News cited senior US intelligence officials as saying that new information suggests a small Al-Qaida cell was on its way to the US or may already be in the country.
Zawahiri warns Brown
Osama bin Laden's deputy warned Gordon Brown on Tuesday that Britain would be hit with "a very precise response" in retaliation for the knighthood given to the novelist Salman Rushdie.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number two in Al-Qaida, made the threat in an audio tape produced by the organization's media wing, as-Sahhab, and distributed to jihadi websites on Tuesday.
The Egyptian's 20-minute speech was entitled Malicious Britain and its Indian Slaves and was monitored by Site, a US-based group.
Zawahiri, deliverer of most recent Al-Qaida messages, accused Britain of defying the Muslim world by honoring the author of The Satanic Verses, who was deemed to have insulted Islam.
Addressing the prime minister, he said: "The policy of your predecessor has brought tragedy and defeat upon you, not only in Afghanistan and Iraq but also in the center of London.
"And if you did not understand, listen, we are ready to repeat it for you, with the permission of Allah. We are sure that you have quite understood it."
Diaa Rashwan, an expert on jihadi groups at Cairo's al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said: "This is part of an attempt to encourage the Al-Qaida franchise, not an operational order. I don't think it exists any more as a centralized organization. Zawahiri and Bin Laden often threaten individual countries."
Source: China Daily/agencies
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