Iraq: Al-Qaida planning attacks in U.S.

BAGHDAD - Iraqi authorities have obtained confessions from captured insurgents who claim al-Qaida is planning suicide attacks in the United States and Europe during the Christmas season, two senior officials said yesterday. A senior U.S. intelligence official confirmed the threat as credible.

Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani told The Associated Press that the botched bombing in central Stockholm last weekend was among the alleged plots the insurgents revealed. Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, in a telephone interview from New York, called the claims "a critical threat."

Al-Bolani and Zebari said Iraq has informed Interpol of the alleged plots, and alerted U.S. and European authorities of the possible danger. Neither specified which country or countries in Europe are alleged targets.

There was no way to verify the insurgents' claims, but Western counterterrorism officials generally are on high alert during the holiday season, especially since last year's failed attack by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner Christmas Day.

Al-Bolani said several insurgents claimed to be part of a cell that took its orders directly from al-Qaida's central leadership. He said at least one of the captured suspects was a foreign fighter from Tunisia.

The confessions were the result of recent operations by Iraqi security forces that netted 73 suspected operatives in the last two weeks, al-Bolani said.

An Iraqi intelligence official said threat information appeared to indicate that Denmark might be attacked, but refused to give details.

Similarly, a senior U.S. intelligence official in Washington said two people in an unspecified European country suspected of being linked to the plot were being watched closely. They did not appear to be so-called homegrown terrorists, the official said.

Both spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the investigation, and both refused to elaborate.

Links between al-Qaida's central leadership, believed to be hiding in Pakistan, and the terror organization's front group in Iraq are tenuous as the Iraqi branch has been run by local insurgents recently. But al-Bolani said the claims, if true, show al-Qaida remains an Iraq presence.

"Several members of this terrorist group have direct links with the central leaders of the al-Qaida organization," al-Bolani said. "Those captured represent the main structure of the al-Qaida organization in Iraq."

He said the suspects claimed that Saturday's suicide bombing in Stockholm, carried out by an Iraqi-born Swede, was among the plots.