JORDAN - July 5 - Plot To Attack US & Israeli Interests Foiled.

A report in The FT, quoting Military Prosecutor Col. Mahmoud Obeidat, says Amman "has foiled a fresh plot to attack US and Israeli interests". Mahmoud says the attacks were averted after 10 Jordanians armed with weapons and explosives were arrested in raids in and around Amman. According to the suspects' lawyer, Mohammad Duwaik, the group is led by Al Shalabi, 34, a Palestinian Jordanian. Duwaik said Al Shalabi confessed to returning to the kingdom after fleeing the fighting in Afghanistan following the US-led overthrow of the Taliban. He was arrested in April at his home in Amman on suspicion of recruiting Jordanians to attack US installations, and providing training in bomb-making. Duwaik said suspected associates were arrested in May and June in raids on Suhab, a run-down satellite of the capital, and the ancient Christian town of Madaba, south of Amman. They include Omar Al Hassan, 30, who holds US nationality, and Mohammad Al Mulluh, 22, who graduated from the Islamic University in the holy city of Medina - identified as one of the sources of Osama Bin Laden's puritanical ideology. Sceptics argue that pro-western Arab regimes are playing to the US gallery in their eagerness to show they are co-operating with Washington's war on terrorism. Intelligence chiefs in Morocco have given unprecedented briefings to western media about arrests of Al Qaida suspects accused of plotting to attack US and British warships in the Strait of Gibraltar. Meanwhile the Saudi authorities have reversed months of denials that bin Laden followers were active in the kingdom. They said 13 people - 11 Saudis, a Sudanese and an Iraqi - had been detained for attempting to shoot down a US military aircraft with a shoulder-fired missile. The Jordanians were not charged with membership of Al Qaida, but the arrests appear to fit an emerging pattern of Arab fighters fleeing from Afghanistan and Europe to forge new links in the Arab World. At least one of the Saudis in Moroccan custody, Zouhair Hilal Mohammad Tabiti, reportedly confessed to having been recruited by bin Laden in Afghanistan to reconnoitre along the north African coast. News of the arrests in Jordan were slow to trickle into the kingdom's government-controlled press. Government ministers were reluctant to give details of their anti-terrorist operations, aware that anti-US sentiment on Jordan's streets has risen markedly in anger at Washington's declared aim of changing the regimes in neighbouring Iraq and the PA. Amman has been one of Washington's closest Arab allies since the Sept. 11 attacks in the US. It is the first Arab state to sign a free-trade agreement with Washington, and the US Congress recently increased aid to Amman to $450m a year. On July 3, the IMF approved Jordan's two-year standby plan to cut subsidies and pensions as part of deepening reforms ahead of the kingdom's meeting with its Paris club creditors on July 8 to reschedule its debt.