US has Evidence ETIM Plans Attack

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, August 30, 2002

US has Evidence ETIM Plans Attack

The United States has evidence that an obscure western Chinese Muslim group has been planning terrorist attacks on US interests abroad, the US embassy in Beijing said Thursday.

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The United States has evidence that an obscure western Chinese Muslim group has been planning terrorist attacks on US interests abroad, the US embassy in Beijing said Thursday.

The accusations against the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) came after Washington announced this week it is prepared to freeze any US-based assets of the ethnic Uygur group.

The US move appeared to mark a change in policy on how Washington views ethnic unrest in western China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region.

"(We) do have some evidence that the ETIM have been planning attacks against US interests abroad," a US embassy spokeswoman said.

"The ETIM is believed to be responsible for more than 200 acts of terrorism in China," she said, without providing any details.

The evidence was mainly supplied by the government of Kyrgyzstan, which in May repatriated two suspected Uygur terrorists to China on the grounds that they were planning attacks on embassies, market places and other public gathering places in the Central Asian country, she said.

"One of the suspected terrorists, Mamet Yasyn, had surveyed several embassies and market places (in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek) and was found travelling with a false Turkish passport," she said.

Since the September 11 terrorist attacks against the US, China has stepped up its effort to quash Muslim separatist movements in Xinjiang, its westernmost region, which shares a small border with Afghanistan.

China has accused the ETIM of seeking to establish an independent state of East Turkestan in Xinjiang and of being directly backed by Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida organization.

"Since the formation of the 'East Turkestan Islamic Movement,' bin Laden has schemed with the heads of the Central and West Asian terrorist organizations many times to help the 'East Turkestan' terrorist forces in Xinjiang to launch a 'holy war'," an official Chinese report on the group said.

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