W O R L D

Qaida ‘plotting’ attack on German Parliament
Berlin, November 21
A group of Al-Qaida terrorists trained in Pakistani camps and assisted by underworld don Dawood Ibrahim are planning to storm Germany’s Parliament in a Mumbai-style attack, a media report has said, prompting authorities here to step up security of the building.

Qaida ‘plotting’ attack on German Parliament

Berlin, November 21
A group of Al-Qaida terrorists trained in Pakistani camps and assisted by underworld don Dawood Ibrahim are planning to storm Germany’s Parliament in a Mumbai-style attack, a media report has said, prompting authorities here to step up security of the building.

The police has cordoned off the area around the historic Reichstag building housing Parliament here and heightened security after authorities received a tip-off that a group of militants were on their way to stage a Mumbai-style attack.

Hundreds of extra policemen have been pressed into service to protect other possible targets as well such as airports, railway stations and places of mass gatherings across the country.

The heightened security for the Reichstag comes after the news magazine ‘Der Spiegel’ reported that a group of six Al-Qaida terrorists, who have visited training camps in the border areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan, are planning to storm the building housing Bundestag, the lower house of Parliament, early next year.

Two of them have already arrived in Berlin six to eight weeks ago and their accomplices, a German, a Turk, a North African and an unidentified man are waiting to enter the country. Their attacks are planned for February or March next year, the magazine said.

The warning about the planned attack on the Reichstag came to the Federal Criminal Office (BKA) from a German Islamic militant, who slipped to Pakistan some time ago to receive training in the terrorist camps there and now wants to return to his family.

However, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere issued a separate warning about “concrete evidence” for an attack by Islamic terrorists at the end of this month on the basis of a second tip-off received by the BKA from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the magazine said.

The US domestic intelligence service warned that a Shiite militant group called Saif had entered into a pact with Al-Qaida to carry out an attack in Germany and two men dispatched by the group were waiting to enter Germany via the UAE on November 22 with Schengen visas, Der Spiegel said.

The FBI has identified Mustaq Altaf Bin-Khadri as the mastermind behind the plot and he is assisted in getting the men across to Germany by weapons and narcotics smuggler Dawood Ibrahim, the report said.

A government spokesman yesterday declined to comment on the Spiegel report and said the government has nothing new to add beyond the warning of a possible terrorist attack this month issued by the Interior Minister.

Chancellor Angela Merkel reacted for the first time to the terror warnings and said the nation is confronted by a “real threat” from terrorists.

Addressing a news conference in Lisbon, where she attended the NATO summit, Merkel called upon the German public to remain calm and not to allow terrorists to disrupt their daily life. — PTI

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US scientist ‘unveils’ N Korea’s N-plans

Seoul, November 21
In secret and with remarkable speed, North Korea has built a new, highly sophisticated facility to enrich uranium, according to an American nuclear scientist, raising fears that the North is ramping up its atomic programme despite international pressure.

The scientist, Siegfried Hecker, said in a report that he was taken during a recent trip to the North’s main Yongbyon atomic complex to a small industrial-scale uranium enrichment facility.

It had 2,000 recently completed centrifuges, he said, and the North told him it was producing low-enriched uranium meant for a new reactor. He described his first glimpse of the new centrifuges as “stunning.” Hecker who is regularly given rare glimpses of the North’s secretive nuclear programme, acknowledged that it was not clear what North Korea stood to gain by showing him the formerly secret area. — AP