Attacks on US will involve weapons of mass destruction, warns Rumsfeld

Major terrrorist attacks on the US are all but certain, and will sooner or later involve nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, the Bush administration has warned.

Iran, Iraq, Syria and North Korea were developing weapons of mass destruction and would supply them to terrorist groups to which they were linked, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, told a Senate committee yesterday. "They inevitably will get their hands on them and will not hesitate to use them," he said, using his bleakest language.

Reinforcing Mr Rumsfeld's message, the State Department's top counter-terrorism official said that for all its setbacks in Afghanistan, al-Qa'ida had not been defeated, and that even if it had, other terrorist groups posed an equally deadly threat. "Additional terrorist attacks are very, very likely," Ambassador Francis Taylor said, as the government published its annual report on global terrorism.

The warnings came as President George Bush prepared to leave on a week-long visit to Europe, during which American plans to drive Saddam Hussein from power will be a prime and contentious topic.

Americans were bombarded with new alarms yesterday, including speculation that the next attacks might take the form of massive explosions rigged by terrorists in rented flats in big apartment buildings, and suggestions that 15 terrorists had entered the country as stowaways on cargo ships.

An announcement that, contrary to expectations and the wish of the public, pilots would not be allowed to have guns in the cockpit is unlikely to reduce the anxiety.

The row continued over whether the Bush administration sat on information that might have enabled it to prevent the 11 September attacks, above all the now-famous July memo sent by an FBI agent in Phoenix, Arizona warning that al-Qa'ida members might be training at US flight schools.

The White House continues to express full support for the FBI director, Robert Mueller, whose agency is at the centre of the storm. However, the revelation that both Mr Mueller and John Ashcroft, the Attorney General, learned of the Phoenix memo shortly after 11 September but made no mention of it to Congress intelligence committees, will increase suspicions that they tried to conceal embarrassing evidence.

The State Department's annual report, the first since 11 September, says a record 3,547 people died because of terrorism attacks last year, almost 90 per cent of them in New York and Washington. Although the report exonerates Iran of any link to 11 September, it is identified as the world's most active sponsor of terrorism. Sudan and Libya are credited with taking some steps to "get out of the business".