Al Qaida regrouped, ready to act - U.S.

Shrewd recruiting of new, young militants has allowed Al Qaida to reestablish itself in Saudi Arabia and around the world as an elusive and deadly threat that is seeking to launch new attacks in the United States and other countries, many U.S. officials now believe.

Al Qaida has not only survived the U.S.-led crackdown against it, but it has found loopholes in the tactics of its pursuers and is exploiting them, according to interviews with U.S. officials here and in Washington.

Of particular concern, these officials say, are indications that the terrorist network has infiltrated an unknown number of essentially untraceable operatives into the United States.

Some of them are believed to be planning suicide bombings and "soft targets" such as subways within the next several months, U.S. officials said.

The assessment is based, in part, on information gained over the past two weeks by U.S. and Saudi authorities jointly investigating the May 12 bombings in the capital of the kingdom. The synchronised blasts killed 34 people at three residential compounds frequented by Western-ers. Those who died included eight Americans and nine suicide bombers.

"At the same time we have learned a lot about how Al Qaida has operated, they have done their homework and figured out ways to get people in who can evade scrutiny and the techniques that have been successful in the past," said one senior U.S. official.

"They're bringing in these people because they know they're not known to law enforcement and intelligence (officials). It gives them the opportunity to operate under the radar screen."

U.S. authorities believe that the names of members of such new "operational cells" don't appear in the database of suspected Al Qaida operatives, supporters and even sympathisers that they have built in the 22 months since the attacks in New York and at the Pentagon.

The database, which is used by law enforcement, intelligence and immigration agencies, cross references many thousands of names gleaned from abandoned training camps in Afghanistan, raided safehouses elsewhere overseas, electronic intercepts, interrogations and other sources.

"We thought we had a really good picture of it," the senior official said of Al Qaida's current membership. "But what we're now seeing is that there are a lot of new cells, many of them beyond the penetration of the CIA. They're ciphers."

Authorities believe the suicide bombers here belonged to one of several Saudi-based Al Qaida cells, and that several dozen hard-core members are plotting further attacks within the kingdom.

Last week, even after the Saudis announced the arrest of 21 people they said were linked to the bombings, U.S. Ambassador Robert Jordan told all "non-essential" Americans to leave the country.

"There is a real and palpable Al Qaida threat here," said one top-ranking diplomat here who has access to classified intelligence cables. "The lethality of the threat, I think, is extraordinary."

Another Saudi-based Al Qaida cell might be trying to sneak into the United States to launch attacks, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, told reporters in Riyadh recently, citing evidence from the investigation.

And U.S. officials said they are investigating whether bomb blasts in Morocco that occurred just four days after the Riyadh attacks are linked, or part of a new Al Qaida offensive.

Initial indications are that the 14 men who launched the five attacks in Casablanca, killing 43 people, were local militants who might have received financing from Al Qaida or one of its regional affiliates.

But U.S. officials said their concerns about an Al Qaida offensive and its apparent emphasis on using relatively new recruits was a factor in the decision to dispatch a team of FBI agents to Casablanca.

The Riyadh investigation represents the first time FBI and CIA agents have been given on-the-ground access to Saudi Arabia, an Al Qaida recruiting and staging centre that played a central role in the September 11 attacks and other plots.

Investigators have uncovered detail about current Al Qaida activity in the Gulf, including evidence that its members are getting large amounts of weapons smuggled in from Yemen and even Iraq.

And because the probe fully combines U.S. and Saudi intelligence and law enforcement capabilities, it has given the Americans a better understanding of Al Qaida's structure nearly two years after its leaders and foot soldiers alike were forced to flee their safe haven in Afghanistan.

Officials say the investigation has dispelled any idea that bin Laden's role or that of top aide Ayman Zawahiri, has diminished because of their flight from Afghanistan and the continuing hunt for them.

What is now known about the Riyadh bombings and other terrorist activity in Saudi Arabia, the officials said, demonstrates that bin Laden and Zawahiri still plot the organisation's long-term strategy.

For months, Al Qaida factions within Saudi Arabia clashed on whether to launch attacks within the kingdom, with some arguing that such attacks would jeopardise fund-raising efforts and alienate their support base.

The attacks were launched only after bin Laden personally approved them, according to the senior U.S. official.

"They don't do anything without someone going back to bin Laden," the official said.

U.S. authorities also believe that the senior Al Qaida leadership, from hideouts in Iran, the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and perhaps elsewhere, is coordinating an effort to find and train new recruits and re-establish its network of cells on every continent, including North America.

Officials are particularly concerned by intelligence indicating Al Qaida wants to carry out attacks on U.S. soil as soon as possible.

"They are trying very hard to find ways to do that," the official said.

Magnus Ranstorp, director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St Andrews University in Scotland, says that Al Qaida's tactics are not surprising, given its history of studying its pursuers and trying to stay one step ahead of them.

"For law enforcement to think anything else is naive," he said. "They are like criminals. They study the methodology of law enforcement, they know how we monitor and track them, and they change their tactics constantly to maintain the element of surprise."