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2 Leaders Tell of Plot to Kill Bush in Genoa
The president of Egypt and the deputy prime minister of Italy say that Osama bin Laden's network of Islamic terrorists threatened to kill President Bush and other leaders of the industrialized world when they met at a summit meeting in Genoa last July.
The White House, in line with longstanding policy not to discuss threats on the president, declined to comment today.
In an interview on French television on Monday, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt spoke in specific terms about the threat, saying that "on June 13 of this year, we learned of a communiqu¨¦ from bin Laden saying he wanted to assassinate George W. Bush and other G8 heads of state during their summit in Italy."
"It was a well-known piece of information," Mr. Mubarak added in the interview broadcast by the network France 3.
Separately, he told Le Figaro, a major French daily newspaper, that Egyptian intelligence services had told the United States about the threat and that the warning included a reference to "an airplane stuffed with explosives."
Several days before Mr. Mubarak's interview, in an appearance on Italian television, Gianfranco Fini, the Italian deputy prime minister, discussed parallels between the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and warnings his government had received before the Genoa meeting in July.
"Many people joked about the Italian Intelligence Force," Mr. Fini said, "but actually they had information that in Genoa there was the hypothesis of an attack on the American president with the use of an airplane. That is why we closed the airspace above Genoa and installed antiaircraft missiles. Those who joked should now reflect."
The senior American security official said the source of warnings from foreign intelligence agencies was often unclear, and the volume was so great that serious threats were frequently difficult to separate from false alarms.
A senior administration official, who could not confirm the accounts, said that foreign intelligence agencies frequently received tips about threats to the president that they passed on to Washington.
While there was a general concern about Mr. bin Laden before the July conference in Italy, there had also been concerns about Islamic extremists at other summit meetings, including the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Brunei last year, attended by President Clinton.
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