US President Barack Obama yesterday for the first time accused an Al-Qaeda affiliate of arming and training a young Nigerian man for a failed suicide mission to blow up a US airliner.
In his weekly radio and video address, Obama promised to hold the group, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), to account for the attack, declaring the US was at war with a "far-reaching network of violence and hatred".
The president's vacation in his home state of Hawaii has been interrupted by the ramifications of the failed attack on a Northwest Airlines jet heading for Detroit on Christmas Day.
Obama has reviewed preliminary results of probes he has ordered into the attack, and said details were becoming clear about the 23-year-old Nigerian suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
"We know that he travelled to Yemen, a country grappling with crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies," Obama said in his address, posted on the White House website early yesterday.
"It appears that he joined an affiliate of Al-Qaeda, and that this group, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America."
US officials previously had not said publicly that the attack was the work of Al-Qaeda, though had noted there was a "linkage" with the terror group.
AQAP last Monday claimed the failed December 25 jet bombing in a statement picked up by US monitors.
Abdulmutallab is accused of trying to blow up the plane as it approached Detroit from Amsterdam, by setting off explosives stitched into his underwear. The attempt failed when the detonator did not set off the explosives as planned, instead igniting a fire which was put out by passengers and crew.
Obama said that because of past attacks by the Al-Qaeda affiliate, he had, even before the Christmas Day attempt, stepped up US cooperation with insurgency-scarred Yemen.
"Training camps have been struck; leaders eliminated; plots disrupted," he said in the address.
"And all those involved in the attempted act of terrorism on Christmas must know: you too will be held to account."
With the focus of the West trained on alleged terror havens in Yemen, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown last Friday called for an international meeting on combating extremism in the country.
Brown's office said the meeting would take place in London on January 28, running "in parallel" with a conference on Afghanistan which is expected to be attended by senior ministers or leaders from over 40 nations.
Yesterday, Yemen welcomed the initiative. "It's a step in the right direction that will mobilise international support for Yemeni development and its efforts to battle unemployment and the effects of poverty," the Saba news agency quoted an official Yemeni spokesman as saying.
And Spain intends to use its six-month presidency of the European Union to reinforce coordination against terror threats, El Pais newspaper reported yesterday citing government officials.
But as such support began to coalesce, it was overshadowed yesterday by news that Danish police shot and wounded an axe-wielding man linked to radical Somali Islamists who tried to break into the home of a cartoonist notorious for his drawing of the prophet Mohammed.
That attack came as Obama put the Northwest bombing attempt in context of the wider threat from terrorism, following complaints from some Republicans that he has not adopted the "war on terror" formulation of predecessor George W. Bush.
He noted it was almost a year since he came to office and delivered his inaugural address.
"On that day I also made it very clear - our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred, and that we will do whatever it takes to defeat them and defend our country, even as we uphold the values that have always distinguished America among nations."