Mauritania's president said yesterday there was no terrorist organisation in his country and three attacks by suspected Islamic militants in recent weeks were the work of a small group of foreign-trained individuals.

President Sidi Mohamed Cheikh Ould Abdallahi also told Reuters in an interview that a shooting attack on the Israeli embassy last week, which injured three bystanders, would not disrupt ties with the Jewish state. Mauritania is one of only three Arab League countries to have diplomatic ties with Israel.

The embassy attack followed the shooting of four French tourists by suspected Islamic militants on December 24 and the killing of three soldiers days later in an ambush on a desert outpost claimed by al Qaeda's North African branch.

The attacks prompted the cancellation of the Dakar rally across the Sahara for the first time in its history, amid fears al Qaeda was expanding its operations into Mauritania from neighbouring Algeria and northern Mali. "There is no structured terrorist organisation implanted in this country. There are no operating zones for these terrorist structures," Abdallahi said. "There are just a few wretches who have acted recently at a time of great media interest."

Fears of a possible spread of al Qaeda to Mauritania have prompted both the United States and former colonial power France to expand security cooperation with the West African state.

Abdallahi won power a year ago in elections hailed as a democratic example to the Arab world and sub-Saharan Africa, after a transition in the wake of a bloodless 2005 coup which toppled former dictator Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya.