London Financial Center A Target?

Police Official Warns Terrorists Have Already Surveyed Area

(AP) 
The commissioner, who first spoke of the threat in comments published in Wednesday's Financial Times, said it was misleading to talk about any particular groups that might be planning an attack.

"There is a range of people who wish us harm," he said.

Other international financial centers also have developed contingencies in the case of terrorist strikes since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

Last summer, U.S. authorities raised the terror alert for financial institutions after uncovering an alleged al Qaeda plot to attack the Citicorp building in New York and the New York Stock Exchange; the International Monetary Fund and World Bank buildings in Washington; and the Prudential Financial Inc.'s headquarters in Newark, New Jersey. The alert was later lifted.

Following the 2001 attacks on New York's World Trade Center, the city's stock exchange established an alternative trading floor, while investment firms created new emergency centers, some of them outside of the municipal area.

The exchange, with its trading floor just blocks from the destroyed World Trade Center site, was not damaged in the attacks but infrastructure problems, namely downed phone lines, made it impossible for trading to immediately resume.

Meanwhile, details emerged Wednesday of testimony given to British investigators by one of the suspects in the failed July 21 bomb attacks against London's transit system.

Hamdi Issac told British officers questioning him in Rome that the explosives in his bag were made of flour and a liquid hair product and were not meant to kill, his Italian lawyer Antonietta Sonnessa said. She added that it had been an attention-grabbing stunt.

A spokeswoman for London's Metropolitan Police refused to comment on Issac's reported claim.

Britain wants to extradite Issac. British police arrested the three other main suspects in the failed bombings and charged them with attempted murder, conspiracy to murder, possessing or making explosives and conspiracy to use explosives on July 21. They face life in prison if convicted.

Police have not charged anyone in connection with the July 7 blasts.