Osama bin-Laden, who is said to have transferred $74,000 to an Indonesian Islamic extremist group to purchase three tons of C4 plastic explosives
for the Bali massacre, is also planning to mount attacks on Israelis and Israeli targets.

The dramatic new revelations are contained in a secret American intelligence report published today by the London Sunday Times.

The US intelligence document is said to include details of a confession by senior Bin Laden aide Omar Faruk, who was Bin Laden's envoy in south-east Asia until he was arrested in Indonesia last June and handed over to the CIA in Afghanistan.

Faruk said the funds for the Bali bombing, which killed almost 200 people at a nightclub in the Indonesian holiday resort last week, were transferred from an account in the name of Sheikh Abu Abdullah Emirati, a pseudonym used by Bin Ladin.

The money was received by Abu Bakr Ba asyir, leader of Jemaah Islamiya, the group which is suspected of having executed the atrocity.

With the money in his hand, Ba asyir sent an assistant to buy the explosives, which were illegally sold by elements in the Indonesian army.

Faruk is also said to have described other al-Qaida operations that were designed to kill Westerners and Israelis in Indonesia. Among the planned operations they devised were:

* Random shootings of Israelis and Americans at hotels throughout Indonesia (a plan later abandoned because it was considered to have "minimal impact.")

* The hijacking of a civilian airliner, which would be flown into an Israeli target.

* A plot to blow up American vessels during US-Indonesian military exercises

* A chemical attack using cyanide which would be sprayed from perfume bottles.

Kuwaiti-born Faruk said he plotted the attacks with Indonesian co-conspirators after arriving in south-east Asia in the early 90s with the aim of establishing links with Islamic militant groups.

He had tried to enrol as a trainee pilot in anticipation of a suicide mission before he participated in the Khalden terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.

In 2000, the paper reported, he had accompanied Bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, on a visit to Indonesia in an attempt to forge closer links extremist groups that were seeking to drive out Christians from Indonesia, the largest Islamic state in the world.

The revelations provided by Faruk support contentions that the Bali bombing was not a one-off outrage by disaffected local Islamic extremists but part of a coordinated, global campaign against American and Israeli interests being planned and funded by al-Qaida.
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