'al-Qaeda plotting new major attack'

Authorities discovered what Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf described as a "second string" of terrorist leaders that met in the remote northwestern province of Waziristan in March 2004, the magazine reports in its Monday issue.

"The personalities involved, the operations, the fact that a major explosives expert came here and went back," Musharraf said, "all this was extremely significant."

A US official described the participants as "cold-blooded killers who are very skilled at what they do and have an intense desire to inflict an awful lot of pain and suffering on America."

Some US officials fear the meeting could have been a key planning session ahead of a major attack, according to the magazine, similar to the way a 2000 meeting in Kuala Lumpur was ahead of the September 11 terror attacks in the United States that killed nearly 3,000 people.