Intelligence agencies and police forces around the world were battling to expose and dismantle bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, in what officials warned was a race against time to prevent further devastating attacks.
US Attorney General Mr John Ashcroft this evening released a four-page hand-written letter in Arabic that he said was a disturbing and shocking view into the mind-set of these terrorists.
In releasing the document, Mr Ashcroft said it had been found in a piece of luggage belonging to Mohamed Atta, an Egyptian suspected of being one of the lead hijackers in the September 11 US attacks.
In Paris 24 suspected Islamic militants went on trial accused of participating in a series of bomb attacks in France in 1995. Reports said one of the accused had admitted to links with bin Laden.
Prosecutors told a London court that an Algerian pilot who appeared in London facing extradition to the United States was an instructor for four of the hijackers involved in the attacks in the United States.
Fears of further attacks forced the cancellation of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference in Brisbane, Australia, on October 6.
Separately, Italy's Prime Minister Mr Silvio Berlusconi was forced to make a humiliating apology for telling journalists who asked about the anti-terror drive that Western civilisation was "superior" to Islam and would conquer it.
Elsewhere in the US, civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson said he was leaning against travelling to Afghanistan for discussions with the Taliban about Osama bin Laden, but he had made no final decision.
Meanwhile a US spokesman said today Sudan has arrested extremists suspected of links with international terrorism and given the United States information on their activities.
The US rewarded Sudan by allowing the UN Security Council to lift largely symbolic UN sanctions imposed on Sudan after militants tried to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 1995.
AFP &