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Neena Bhandari in Sydney
Australia has asked India to allow its own investigation of the man arrested in Bombay for allegedly planning September 11-style terrorist attacks in Australia, Prime Minister John Howard said on Friday.
"We have sought the approval of the Indian authorities to talk to this man and we are waiting for that response," Howard told a local radio station 3AW.
Howard endorsed the Australian Attorney General Darryl Williams' confirmation on Thursday that the man, identified as Mohammed Afroz Abdul Razzak, did undertake flight training in Australia in 1997 and 1998.
Razzak, who was sent to judicial custody by a Bombay court on Thursday, had allegedly confessed that Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network was planning air-borne terrorist strikes in Australia, Britain and at the Parliament House in New Delhi, alongside the September 11 strikes.
"Sometimes allegations of this kind can be either embellished or fabricated. We seek, quite naturally, to undertake some of our own investigations," Howard said.
Urging caution over the claim by the suspected suicide pilot, Howard said the 55-storey Rialto Towers had been named as a possible terrorist target, but not Parliament House in Canberra.
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