Cairo - Carlos the Jackal, once one of the world's most wanted men, said in remarks published from his French jail on Wednesday that anti-US groups mooted the idea of slamming planes into the World Trade Centre as early as 1991.
The ageing former guerrilla leader, serving a life sentence for the murder in 1975 of two French secret service agents, said an unspecified group of "anti-imperialists" hit on the idea in revenge for the "terrible destruction" wrought by the US-led air campaign against Iraq to force it out of Kuwait in 1991.
"I attended an exciting meeting of cadres from anti-imperialist groups of different ideologies. In an informal, unofficial way the need was agreed to respond with bombings in the United States," he said in a handwritten answer to questions from the London-based Arabic daily al-Hayat.
His comments were published on the first anniversary of the September 11 hijacked plane attacks on New York's World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, which killed more than 3 000 people. Washington has blamed the attacks on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
'I cannot describe the great feeling of satisfaction' "The martyr Mir Murtada Bhutto, secretary-general of the Pakistani Zulfikar organisation, suggested crashing into the World Trade Centre in New York with a plane, and not just the obvious targets in Washington," Illich Ramirez Sanchez, known as Carlos the Jackal, said.
The Venezuelan-born Carlos was apparently referring to the estranged brother of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto who was killed in a shootout with Pakistani police in 1996. Carlos did not say where the meeting took place.
Carlos was in Sudan when he was extradited to France in 1994.
"I followed the news of the attack from the beginning without stopping. I cannot describe the great feeling of satisfaction," he said.
Asked what message he would send to Bin Laden, Carlos said: "I would begin with brotherly greetings, then I would encourage him to continue the struggle and safeguard his life, because he has become a symbol of the jihad."
Carlos is believed to be responsible for about 80 killings "I hope that he is still living, and if he has not been martyred he will undoubtedly play a decisive role," he wrote.
"(The US) people are really great and do not deserve the hatred of the whole world. Nevertheless, every lover of justice hates the American imperialists, the worst tyrants in the history of humanity," Carlos added.
Carlos is believed to be responsible for about 80 killings in the name of the Palestinian struggle and other revolutionary causes during the 1970s and 1980s.
He is best known for leading the 1975 assault on an Opec meeting in Vienna, where he and five others took about 70 people hostage, including 11 oil ministers.
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