By STEVEN ERLANGER
c.2010 New York Times News Service (via Peninsula Daily News)
PARIS — Al-Qaida and related groups are plotting new attacks on Western European capitals, European officials said today (Wednesday), but they had no actionable intelligence suggesting either the timing or specific locations.
French and German officials played down reports of a significant new threat from the main al-Qaida group hiding in Pakistan, saying that any plot appeared to be in the planning stages.
One Western official familiar with the intelligence said that this plot involved small teams of gunmen equipped with small arms who hoped to mount commando-style raids in Western European capitals, which are considered softer targets than the United States.
In Britain, security officials noted that the terrorist threat alert remained “severe,” as it has been for months, indicating that an attack is considered “highly likely.”
But a senior French official said that France was on high alert because of another threat — from al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, which is linked to, but operates separately from, al-Qaida itself.
The French official, who is also familiar with the intelligence from Washington and allies, said:
“We have had intelligence exchanges with our American partners over the past few weeks regarding potential threats, but there was nothing along the lines of major plots in all these capitals, not with any specificity or substance behind them.”
The official said: “Our problem is North Africa; it’s AQIM, and it’s unrelated to Pakistan.”
The German government said in a statement from the Interior Ministry that it was aware of al-Qaida’s “long term” aim to attack Western targets, but “at present there are no concrete pointers to imminent attacks on Germany stemming from this.”
Alarm bells went off in Western Europe overnight, especially in Britain, after reports that American intelligence was warning its allies of simultaneous plots against European capitals, with armed men shooting civilians and taking hostages.
In Washington, a senior American official said that different plots were “in varying stages of maturity” and were “at a worrisome level,” involving either Westerners trained by al-Qaida in Pakistan or pre-existing al-Qaida cells in Europe that rely on guidance or money from Pakistan.
France is already on its second-highest state of alert.
There has been a string of nine bomb alerts in September, which have twice meant the evacuation of the Eiffel Tower and two nearby subway stations.
But the threat from al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb stems from a separate stream of intelligence, the senior French officials said.
Tensions have been high generally since the anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, and on Sept. 15, five French citizens, along with two African colleagues, were kidnapped by the al-Qaida-linked group in a uranium-mining region of Niger, in central Africa, where they were working for French companies.
The French believe the hostages are alive and being held in northwestern Mali.
The French Foreign Ministry spokesman, Bernard Valero, said Wednesday that “information transmitted by American authorities, particularly on the terror threat in Europe, have been analyzed, cross-checked and, if the need arises, they are taken into account in our national evaluation of the threat.”
A German official told the Reuters news agency that the reports might have been set off in part by the interrogation of a German of Afghan origin captured in Afghanistan in July.
The German, said by the German media to be named Ahmed Sidiqi, 36, from Hamburg, had traveled to Waziristan and received firearms and explosives training.
He told American interrogators in Afghanistan about plans for attacks by small armed groups in European cities, a senior European official said.
Some of the potential attackers may already be in Europe, Sidiqi said, according to the official, and Sidiqi mentioned the Haqqani network in Pakistan as involved in the plot.
The network is allied with the Taliban and has been a target of some recent drone attacks in Pakistan.
Another French official speculated that the leak of Washington’s concerns about attacks in Europe from Pakistani al-Qaida and the Taliban was also meant to justify the increasing drone attacks on targets inside Pakistan, to press Pakistan to use ground troops more aggressively in the tribal areas and even to prepare the ground for using American ground forces, covert or otherwise, inside Pakistan.
Many in Washington believe that the answer to stability in Afghanistan lies in a more aggressive offensive against al-Qaida and Taliban militants sheltering in Pakistan.
In the last two weeks, French officials have gone on the record about the threat from al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.
Bernard Squarcini, director of the Central Directorate of Domestic Intelligence warned that “all the blinkers are on red” because the threat to France was high.
The director general of the National Police, Frédéric Péchenard, said in a newspaper interview on Sept. 23 that France had been warned by another intelligence service that a female suicide bomber intended to attack in Paris that day.
And the interior minister, Brice Hortefeux, spoke openly about the threat on Sept. 20.
France has been a prominent supporter of the war in Afghanistan, has passed a bill outlawing the full facial veil and has had an awkward debate about national identity that many Muslims saw as aimed at them.
But the French have also used military forces to attack al-Qaida cells in northern Africa, which have taken other French hostages and killed at least one of them in retaliation in July.
In Washington, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said in a statement:
“We are not going to comment on specific intelligence,” but “as we have repeatedly said, we know al-Qaida wants to attack Europe and the United States.”
Information is routinely shared with allies, he said, “in order to disrupt terrorist plotting, identify and take action against potential operatives, and strengthen our defenses against potential threats.”
This month, the Central Intelligence Agency has escalated its bombing campaign in Pakistan using armed drones.
American officials said the intense bombardment in the tribal areas was intended to keep militant groups from sending operatives across the border into Afghanistan to replenish Taliban ranks, as well as to disrupt any communications between Pakistani militants and operatives who might be placed in Europe.
American officials said it was unclear what impact, if any, the drone attacks would have on a terrorism plot that might be carried out inside Europe.
On Wednesday, after the Eiffel Tower had been evacuated the night before, the atmosphere was calm, with many tourists unaware that there might be a threat. Chellene Tamby, 21, a business student, read on the grass of the nearby Champ de Mars.
She had heard about the bomb alert but said: “’France is a great power, and consequently the country is inevitably threatened.”
Too much public discussion just spreads panic, she said.
André Dunstetter, 71, sat on a nearby bench.
“We never know when and where a bomb attack will take place, but that doesn’t mean we’ll have to stop living,” he said.
“I believe that al-Qaida’s threat is a psychological one, and it is meant to destabilize security services and the population.”
