In an interview on an Arab television station, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Salih said an Egyptian national is to blame for the attack on the USS Cole.

"The person who perpetrated the operation (against the Cole), who could have been accompanied by another person (at the time of the attack), is of Egyptian nationality, according to the early results of the enquiry," Saleh said.

The suspect is believed to belong to Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the group currently blamed for the assault.

Just days after the attack on the guided-missile destroyer, Salih told the Qatari satellite channel al-Jazira that "the two people involved in the attack on the American destroyer were killed in the explosion."

The Cole was struck Oct. 12 when two men piloted their small boat filled with explosives alongside the destroyer, which was moored in Aden harbor in Yemen, and exploded. The attack killed 17 U.S. sailors and wounded 38.

Clinton administration officials said the new information regarding the Egyptian suspect is part of a growing body of evidence connecting the deadly attack to Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden. The terrorist has been indicted for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224. Most recently, a tape of bin Laden threatening the United States was televised. He also recently married a woman from Yemen and has longtime family ties to the country, Clinton administration officials said. Bin Laden's terrorist organization has close ties to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

Salih specified in the television interview that the Islamic militants responsible for the attack had fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation and then moved to Yemen. Bin Laden was a leader in the effort to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan and is reported to live there now under the protection of the ruling Taliban militia.

U.S. intelligence has identified specific new terrorit threats from bin Laden against U.S. military forces in Turkey, Qatar and Bahrian, prompting U.S. military in the Persian Gulf region to heighten alert status.

A senior American defense official told the Associated Press that the targets of the new threats include a school in Bahrain attended by American and other foreign children. The school was closed indefinitely on Monday. Other targets include the U.S. embassies in Bahrain and Qatar, and an unspecified U.S. military site in Qatar, the official said.

Despite mounting evidence, both the Yemeni president and FBI officials caution that it is too soon to conclude that bin Laden is behind the bombing. Salih told the television interviewer the joint Yemeni-FBI investigation is producing quick results, but the outcome remains to be seen.

About 80 of the approximately 100 FBI investigators were scheduled to leave the area by today, but Clinton administration officials say replacements may be sent in their place.