Osama bin Laden fear grips Israelis
Agence France Presse

SYDNEY, SEPTEMBER 13: Israeli athletes remained likely targets for an Olympic terrorist attack, Israel's Deputy defence minister has warned as security around the team was tightened in Sydney.

Games security Chief Peter Ryan, the New South Wales Police Commissioner, said extra security had been provided for the Israeli team and officials who began arriving since Tuesday.

The first batch of nine were whisked out a back entrance at Sydney airport to a waiting bus.

``We are looking at the Israeli team particularly, and Israel, as being one of those countries that attracts a great deal of threats of terrorism against it,'' Ryan said.

``Israel has always been on the top of our list as being one of those vulnerable countries. ``The United States is another and there are one or two others.''

Ryan said as well as Australian protection, Israeli security agents would travel with the Israeli team, but he denied they were armed. ``They don't have any other weapons with them at all because that's expressly banned by the Commonwealth government,'' he said.

``We've made this quite clear to Israeli security officials.'' Israeli security forces claim to have evidence that Hamas has recently given funding and offered suicide bombers to Palestinian activists trained by Bin Laden, and Sneh said he believed Israel was on the exiled Saudi millionaire's hitlist.

``Until recently we thought that we were not on his hit list but we discovered that we are and that Israel, Israelis and Israeli interests are on his target list,'' he said.

``I believe that those terrorists who would like to showthat they don't accept the fact that people from all nations come to a peacefull, sporting competition, they would try to do it and we of course assume that Israel has to be one of the targets.''

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, in a review of Olympic security, described Bin Laden as ``an example of the sort of people we clearly monitor as best we can.''

Bin Laden, who lives as a ``welcomed guest'' in Afghanistan, was also alleged by police to be behind a terrorist plot to target a Sydney nuclear reactor during the Olympics.

``We've done everything we can possibly do for this, as much as humanly possible, as much as technically possible,'' Ryan said.

``There's no guarantees of course with international terrorism, it is a very, very difficult problem for the world to deal with.

``But we've done as much as humanly possible and I think people ought to brush that to one side, get out there and enjoy the Games.''

Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.