NEW YORK, Aug 17: US State Department had warned the Clinton administration that Osama Bin Laden’s relocation from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996 would give him an even more dangerous haven, but the government chose not to deter the move, newly declassified documents obtained by the New York Times say.

“In what would prove a prescient warning, the State Department intelligence analysts said in a top-secret assessment on Mr Bin Laden that summer that ‘his prolonged stay in Afghanistan — where hundreds of Arab mujahideen receive terrorist training and key extremist leaders often congregate — could prove more dangerous to US interests in the long run than his three-year liaison with Khartoum” in Sudan, said the newspaper in its Wednesday edition.

The declassified documents, obtained by the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch as part of a Freedom of Information Act request and provided to the New York Times, shed light on a murky and controversial chapter in Osama Bin Laden’s history: his relocation from Sudan to Afghanistan as the Clinton administration was striving to understand the threat he posed and explore ways of confronting him.

Before 1996, Osama bin Laden was regarded more as a financier of terrorism than a mastermind. But the State Department assessment, which came a year before he publicly urged Muslims to attack the United States, indicated that officials suspected he was taking a more active role, including in the bombings in June 1996 that killed 19 American soldiers at the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, the newspaper said.