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Posted on 09/11/2001 11:04:07 PM PDT by HAL9000

Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, who is accused of masterminding the 1998 bomb attack on the US embassy in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, has denied that he is behind Tuesday's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Bin Laden contacted a Pakistani newspaper on Wednesday to say that he supported the attack, but was not involved, reported the BBC.

The denial will no doubt be welcomed by the Taliban government in Afghanistan, who have been sheltering bin Laden. They have denied that bin Laden is capable of launching such a complex operation.

However, US officials had said on Tuesday that the people who conducted attacks on New York and Washington that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon may have had links to Saudi exile bin Laden or his organization.

Names of suspected "terrorists" with possible ties to bin Laden's organization were found on the passenger rosters of the hijacked planes, a government source had said. Throughout Tuesday, US officials have said the massive attacks by hijackers who crashed commercial airplanes into the buildings may be linked to bin Laden. An Arab journalist with access to bin Laden told Reuters in London that the Saudi exile had spoken of an "unprecedented attack" on US interests three weeks ago. US officials, however, said they had no knowledge such an attack was coming. "There was no advance warning of this," one unidentified official said.

Asked if he believed bin Laden was responsible, Senator Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican who is vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said: "A lot of things point to him."

"There are indications that people with links to bin Laden and the al Qaeda organization may have been responsible," an unnamed US official told Reuters. "There is reason to believe people with links to him may have been responsible for this."

US is still investigating whether the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen last year was tied to bin Laden.

But some intelligence analysts urged caution in making snap judgements about who was responsible for Tuesday's attacks, saying it could have been the work of other groups tied to the Middle East, angry over a perception that the United States supports Israel to the detriment of the Palestinians.

CNN reports that several groups, including Hamas, in the Middle East have denied responsibility.

President Bush, in the meanwhile, has said he would "make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them."

Reuters contributed to this report.

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