March 17, 2002	Sunday	Muharram 2, 1423

BERLIN, March 16: The United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has warned Germany and Britain about possible bomb attacks by members of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, Germany’s Focus magazine reported on Saturday.

Citing a memo circulated on March 8 by Germany’s BKA federal police authority, the magazine said the CIA tip-off was based on surveillance of two suspected Al Qaeda members in Pakistan.

The two were quoted by the CIA as saying there would soon be “good news” about bomb explosions in Germany and Britain. According to the report, due to be published in Focus magazine’s Monday edition, the BKA classed the CIA alert as “vague” because it did not mention any time, target or method.

But the authority said the fact there could still be Al Qaeda “sleepers” in Germany meant security services should assume there was “an unchanged high risk situation in Germany”.

Germany has been a centre of the worldwide investigation into the Sept 11 hijacked plane attacks on US cities since it emerged that three of the four kamikaze pilots studied in the northern city of Hamburg.

A German government spokeswoman declined to comment on the report but said that American and German security services remained in close contact with one another.—Reuters