NEW DELHI, June 13: The Philippines-based Abu Sayyaf militant group is planning to assassinate Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, an Indian online newspaper reported on Wednesday, the day US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was winding up his brief tour of New Delhi.

“This is so alarming that even hardened intelligence sleuths are losing sleep,” India Today magazine’s web-based newspaper said. “For the first time there are indications that the winds of threat are blowing Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s way from the ‘wrong’ direction.”

Vajpayee is perennially under threat from West Asian, and Pakistan-based groups, it said. But now comes a new threat of a suicide attack on the prime minister from the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) based in the Sulu Islands in southern Philippines.

“This is the first time that terrorist outfits in Southeast Asia have been reported to be planning strikes in India,” the newspaper said.

The worrying aspect is that the ASG has an intimate nexus with the Al Qaeda, and most of its 2,000 members have been trained at terror camps in Afghanistan,” it said. Intelligence agencies now believe that the Al Qaeda may have regrouped in South and Southeast Asia for fresh strikes in India, and across the world.

The ASG made headlines last week when they killed two American hostages after holding them captive for more than a year.

“Intercepts available with the intelligence bureau and Delhi police suggest that the group may have planned attacks on the prime minister’s convoy on May 27,” the newspaper said. A secret memo sent out to the security agencies on June 5 by the head of the special cell, indicates that a concrete plan was in place. But the memo does not make it clear whether any attempt was actually made on the convoy.

The facts detailed in the memo are cause for concern. Arms for the operation may have made their way into the country. Nearly US$10 million from an Indian bank may have reached someone in Manila, the obvious inference being that someone in the ASG was getting paid by some counterparts in India, the newspaper said.—J.N