Despite lack of any conclusive evidence, the needle of suspicion has quickly swung towards the familiar bogey of Islamic terrorism, and in particular towards a man being called the Jackal of the 1990s - Osama Bin Laden, a reclusive Saudi millionaire-turned-terrorist who is in hiding in the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and who is a self-professed America-hater. Bin Laden was one of the many instruments used by the United States to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Under a little known document called the National Security Directive 166 of 1985, the then President Ronald Reagan ordered a stepped up US covert aid to militant groups fighting the Soviets.

The order resulted in the CIA funnelling -lavishly, and as it turned out, recklessly - arms and training to the so-called Islamic warriors. Much of the aid was channeled through the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

Americans are now beginning to think that the same militants have now turned against them. Some of them involved in the operation or who saw the war first hand say the ``militants'' (now called ``terrorists'') hated the Americans as much if not more than the Soviets even at that time.

``I met some of the people when I visited the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region at the height of the war 11 years ago and what struck me was that even though they despised us, they did not mind accepting our generosity as long as the money was real and the guns and missiles could kill the enemy of the day. It did not take a genius to wonder whether their enemy of the day would sometime in the not too distant future become America,'' according to Jack Payton, a St Petersberg Times writer who saw the game close up.

Payton isamong the many Americans now espousing the theory that ``yesterday's allies like Osama Bin Laden maybe today's embassy bombers.'' Vincent Cannistraro, a former director of counterterrorism at the CIA also feels that the speculation centers around Osama because of the kind of coalition of anti-American forces he has stitched together - a network which includes extremist groups from Afghanistan to Egypt.

``Mr Bin Laden learnt a lot of tricks from the CIA, which is glad to help him fight the Russians. We all helped him. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United States were united in the view that the Russians must be defeated. He was the point man,'' an unnamed Saudi intelligence official was quoted as saying in the US media.

US intelligence reports say Bin Laden, who is also a suspect in the Khobar Towers bombing, issued a fatwa in February calling for guerrilla attacks against US military and civilian targets around the world to force a retreat from Jerusalem and Saudi Arabia.

``The ruling to killAmericans and their allies, civilian and military, is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate Al Aqsa Mosque and the Holy Mosque from their grip,'' the fatwa, printed in the London Arabic newspapers Al-Quds al-Arabi, said. The fatwa was signed by several other militant groups and extremist members of the Islamic clergy.

The reference to kill Americans ``in any country in which it is possible to do so,'' is a definite pointer that the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania could have an Islamic angle, experts feel.

In previous interviews, Bin Laden had often railed against Americans saying ``we believe the biggest thieves in the world and the terrorists are the Americans.''

The 41-year-old son of a Saudi construction magnate, Bin Laden was a virtual overlord during the Afghan war, dispensing money and patronage to Islamic warriors. He is believed to have relocated to Kandahar in Taliban-controlled Afghanistanafter being declared persona non grata by the Saudi royals in 1992, because of his rabid opposition to US forces being stationed in Saudi Arabia.

Reports out of Afghanistan say he operates in style out of a souped-up cave full of high-tech gizmos, including a satellite dish for making worldwide telephone calls, an electric generator, a computer and a library of Islamic and political literature.