Reuters Posted online: Wednesday, February 11, 2004 at 1154 hours IST Updated: Wednesday, February 11, 2004 at 1726 hours IST 1 2Next » Berlin, February 11: Al Qaeda is under pressure to strike another high-value Western target and may be looking at attacking chemical plants or shooting down planes with surface-to-air missiles, a top German intelligence official said on Tuesday.
“A substantial decline in activities in the next couple of years is highly improbable,” Rudolf Adam, Deputy Head of German's BND foreign intelligence agency, told a security conference in Berlin.
“On the contrary, we would feel that pressure is mounting on al Qaeda to reassert its effectiveness and its ability to strike another really big high-value target” in order to keep its “trade name” visible, he said.
Al Qaeda, blamed for the September 11 attacks on US cities in 2001, has not succeeded in striking the West again since. But it or its affiliates have been held responsible for a series of attacks elsewhere, including in Indonesia, Morocco, Turkey, Kenya, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
Adam said Air transport remained a potential target, adding, “The next threat that we observe with great concern is the possibilities of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, so called MANPADs.”
Two such missiles narrowly missed an Israeli airliner taking off from the Kenyan Port of Mombasa in November 2002, in an operation attributed to al Qaeda.
