Friday, August 26 2005 10:01 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

London: Al-Qaeda is planning an attack on a big financial centre in Asia, such as Tokyo, Sydney or Singapore to undermine investor confidence in the region, a top French investigator has said.

Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere said several Asian countries were less prepared than the United States (US) or Europe for such an attack.

"We are somewhat neglecting the capacity or desire of the Al-Qaeda organisation to destabilise the South-East Asian region," the respected Judge, who has orchestrated the arrests of hundreds of terrorist suspects in the past 20 years, told the Financial Times newspaper.

"We have several elements of information that make us think that countries in this region, especially Japan, could have been targeted," Brugueire said.

According to the report, Brugueire appeared to raise public awareness of the growing threat to Asia, which is understood to have emerged from recent intelligence findings.

He argued that some Asian countries have less experience of Islamic terrorists than the US or Europe, making them more complacent about the risk of attack.

An attack on an Asian financial centre, such as Tokyo or Sydney, would be symbolically important for al-Qaeda, he said and designed to throw the region's recent economic boom into doubt.

"An attack on this country (Japan) would have a very serious effect. We forget that the al-Qaeda organisation is sharpening its strategy, more than just focusing on so-called soft targets it is looking to hit economic and financial centres.