Australia fears Bin Laden terror attack at Sydney Olympics

LONDON -- Australian authorities have warned that groups linked to Saudi billionaire bomber, Osama Bin Laden, pose a terror threat to this year's Sydney Olympics.

Australian intelligence and security agencies have identified groups linked to Bin Laden in Australia from a list of over 16,000 known terrorists belonging to 600 active groups, the Melbourne Age newspaper said Thursday.

The paper said intelligence officials have traced Bin Laden's connections across Southeast Asia, including the Phillippines and Thailand, but the officials said a terrorist attack was "low" risk.

"Assessments have been made that a terrorist attack in Sydney is highly unlikely -- it is a very low probability," the paper quoted a source as saying. "But if one does occur, the evidence suggests it is most likely to result from Islamic [militant] activity connected to him [Bin Laden] and the effects of that would be devastating."

On Wednesday, the Australian government announced that thousands of elite troops spent 18 months in counter-terrorism training, in preparation for the games. In 1996, a bomb at the Atlanta Games killed one and injured 100 others.

Australian Attorney-General Darryl Williams said Wednesday that "at present, there is no indication of any specific threat against the security of Sydney 2000 Games".

Australian authorities first became concerned about Bin Laden's links in the country in 1994. FBI and CIA officials traced phone calls made in the United States to New South Wales by several of the convicted bombers of New York's World Trade Center in 1993. The World Trade Center bombing, in which six people were killed and hundreds injured, has been linked to Bin Laden. Bin Laden is sought by the United States for masterminding the bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, in which more than 200 people were killed.