Suspect pegged in Cole bombing

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.