Clinton accuses bin Laden

Osama bin Laden: Still America's most wanted man

President Clinton has made his most direct accusation yet that the Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden tried to blow up Americans over the turn of the millennium.

Mr Clinton said publicly, and in greater detail, what United States officials had previously alleged in private - that a complex series of arrests from Seattle to Jordan at the end of last year were linked to a single plot.

Mr bin Laden has been previously accused by the US of blowing up their embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Speaking at a coastguard graduation ceremony in Connecticut, Mr Clinton also outlined what he saw as the main threats faced by the US in the new century.

The December plot

"Last December, working with Jordan, we shot down a plot to place large bombs at locations where Americans might gather on New Year's Eve.

"We learned this plot was linked to terrorist camps in Afghanistan, and the organisation created by Osama bin Laden," Mr Clinton said.

Ahmed Ressam: Alleged involvement in bomb plot

Shortly after the plan was uncovered, customs agents in Seattle discovered bomb making materials being smuggled into the US, the president said, "the same material used by bin Laden in other places."

In the alleged bomb smuggling plot, Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian citizen, was arrested in December after entering the US from Canada at Port Angeles, Washington.

Prosecutors allege that Mr Ressam was at the centre of a plot, involving a number of other Algerian nationals in New York and Canada, to bomb buildings or other targets in the US.

BBC Washington correspondent Paul Reynolds says Mr bin Laden remains enemy number one for the US.

He is believed to be living in Afghanistan, and has been charged in his absence with conspiracy following the African embassy bombs.

Other threats

The president gave this as one example of a wide-ranging series of threats faced by the US at the start of this century.

These included attacks on computer networks and even the threat of Aids.

He told the coastguard cadets that they would face "a fateful struggle" between forces of integration and harmony, and the forces of disintegration and chaos.

Technology, Mr Clinton said, could be a servant of either side, or both.