An intensive secret hunt is underway in the United States and Canada since mid-October for an al Qaeda operative known to be at large with enough radioactive material for a “dirty bomb” strike in a North American city.

This is revealed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s exclusive counter-terrorism sources.

A warrant for his arrest in both countries has been signed for a Saudi national called Adnan Al Shukri Jumah, aged 27, student of nuclear engineering employed at the 5-megawatt nuclear reactor for research at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He was under surveillance when in early October, he stopped attending class at the university and thought to be at home. His disappearance was not remarked until a few days later when a large quantity of radioactive material was missed from the university’s nuclear reactor.

American and Canadian investigators suspect Al Shukri Jumah has the bomb assembled ready for detonation. Since he gave his watchers the slip, Washington and Ottawa have called in large reinforcements for the race to catch him before it is too late.

A number of informed counter-terrorism sources told DEBKA-Net-Weekly that American authorities first heard about Al Shukri Jumah’s terror mission on al Qaeda’s behalf from Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the senior operative of the fundamentalist network captured at his home in Karachi one night in March. Sheikh Mohammed described the wanted man as a one-man cell trained to build radiological bombs capable of environmental contamination from scratch. From Sheikh Mohammed, US counter-terror agencies learned for the first time about the single-cell al Qaeda chemical, biological or nuclear strike-teams consisting of lone operatives trained to operate solo. The experts had previously assumed that each unconventional weapons cell numbered several members and was supported by broad logistical backup crews.

Explaining how Al Shukri Jumah fooled his watchers, our sources say he kept himself to himself at all times, had no friends, kept strictly to his study and work schedule at the reactor and habitually left the facility at the same time as his colleagues. His “normal” behavior, the sources said, apparently gave him entry to the place where dangerous materials were stored without raising suspicion. Bit by bit, he smuggled out enough radioactive material to build the dirty bomb at home.

His disappearance raises the following questions in the minds of senior investigators, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s counter-terrorism sources:

1. Why were there no agents observing the subject inside the reactor? These sources did not disclose which security agencies were responsible for the surveillance.

2. Who gave Al Shukri Jumah a Saudi Arabian under suspicion access to the reactor? And how is it that no one noticed increasing amounts of nuclear materials were disappearing over a period of months?

3. How was Al Shukri Jumah able to give his watchers the slip?

4. Was he tipped off by an inside source in the US or Canadian security services?

A senior source close to the hunt says: ”These points certainly need clarifying. But catching this man before disaster strikes is paramount.”

It was an angry Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak who telephoned his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad on Monday, November 3.

”I am coming to see you and bringing along my senior adviser, Osama el-Baz,” Mubarak told him.

Assad took the news without a word, then invited Mubarak to spend the night and hold further discussions on a wide range of issues on Tuesday.

”No, I have to get back to Cairo Monday night,” Mubarak replied shortly.

The Egyptian leader entered the Radwa presidential palace at 5 p.m. and left for Damascus international airport at 8 p.m.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence and Middle Eastern sources report that Mubarak brought with him a message of unprecedented harshness from Washington. Nothing like it had been conveyed to any regional leader since Saddam Hussein was put on notice of the fate awaiting him if the Americans invaded Iraq.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources have viewed the transcript of the three-hour Mubarak-Assad exchange:

Mubarak: “I am here because Washington asked me to pay you an urgent visit. I discussed this with our other Arab brothers and they told me they are deeply troubled by the situation. You must understand that your actions in Iraq and Palestine may expose Syria to the peril of becoming the “Cambodia” of the Iraq War.

Mubarak used the Cambodia metaphor to convince the far less experienced Syrian leader of the hazards of persisting in his support for Iraqi guerrilla fighters and Palestinian terrorist organizations. He could well incur a bombing offensive against Syrian targets on the scale of the secret 1973 air blitz the Nixon administration loosed against Cambodia and Laos on the advice of secretary of state Henry Kissinger.

Assad: Is that the message the Americans asked you to deliver?

Instead of answering the question, Mubarak declared: Don’t expect me or anyone else in the Arab world to come to your aid. Remember that no one rushed to help Saddam Hussein or the Palestinians.”

Assad: I’m not saying that not one Arab guerrilla joining Saddam’s resistance came from here, Syria. But you know as well as I do that many also enter from Saudi Arabia and recently from Kuwait.

Mubarak: That’s true, but it is also true that more than half of the fighters do come from here.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence and counter-terrorism sources confirm Assad’s claim that Kuwait is increasingly the source of Al Qaeda fighters heading for the flashpoint zones of the Sunni Triangle north of Baghdad. They enter without difficulty through Iraq’s southern border in the guise of merchants traveling to Baghdad on business and are collected by Iraqi intelligence officers loyal to Saddam, who escort them to Baghdad, Ramadi, Fallujah, Samara and Tikrit.

Mubarak: Now, let’s talk about Hizballah. Your greatly esteemed father (the late president Hafez Assad) never gave Hizballah the kind of free rein to sound off and behave in the way it does under your custodianship. What is going on here? You let them publish their newspapers in Syria and their clerics teach in Syrian religious schools. What are you waiting for? For them to grow into a political force in Syria that no one can stop?

And what are you thinking of letting opposition factions in your regime run off with national policy? Your father must be turning in his grave. How can you allow them to publicly threaten to attack Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights? And what is this woman who was employed by your father as an ordinary translator doing publicly haranguing Israel as if she were your foreign minister?”

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources, Mubarak referred to the foreign ministry’s powerful head of foreign relations Buthaina Shaaban. In the early stages of the Iraq War, Washington had judged Shaaban pro-American and counted on her moderating influence on Assad’s regime. But as time goes by, she is becoming increasingly militant and issuing statements that may or may not be closely coordinated with the president or his close advisers.

Two weeks before the Syrian Accountability Act comes before the US Senate, top administration officials are at loggerheads over the final text.

Last month, a tough version imposing diplomatic and economic sanctions was approved by the House of Representatives 398-4. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in Washington report that defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld favors harsh punishment for Syria for its support of guerrilla fighters in Iraq, to show a cocky Syrian President that Washington means business.

However Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind), an avowed anti-sanctions advocate, seeks to water the text down “to provide the president with maximum flexibility.”

Our Washington sources report that he reflects the views of a pro-moderation camp led surprisingly by Vice President Richard Cheney, as well as secretary of state Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage.

Whereas one member of the Rumsfeld camp referred indignantly to Syrian president Bashar Assad, “Who does he think he is?” an official on the opposite side said: “Additional pressure does need to be brought on Syria, but this is not the right time.”

Lugar has promised to modify the Senate version of the bill before it is sent to the floor.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Washington sources detail the modifications referring to Syria’s espousal of terrorists. Whereas the original Act requires the president to impose two or more sanctions from a list of six if Syria fails to cut its links with terrorist groups including Hamas, Hizballah and the Islamic Jihad or halt its ballistic missile program and biological and chemical weapons productions, the bill put before the Senate allows the president to waive the imposition of sanctions for six-month periods for national security reasons.

The clause requiring Syrian compliance coming up for review every six months is omitted as is the preamble defining a state sponsoring terrorism as a terrorist state. The sanctions law can therefore be invoked only if the Syrian government is proved to be directly complicit in terror operations. Under another modification, Syria is no longer held responsible for the actions of the Hizballah and the Palestinian terrorist groups based in Damascus. The call for action to curtail Syria’s efforts to expand its support of the Hizballah has made way for a lukewarm request to the administration to consider such curtailment.

The original bill for the first time imposed sanctions on a state sponsoring terror in a clause that drew a parallel between the Hizballah and al Qaeda. That key parallel has been dropped, further diluting the legislation as a whole.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Gulf sources, opposition to toning down the sanctions bill comes from an unexpected quarter, Kuwait. Thursday, Nov 6, Ahmed Jarallah, the editor of the semi-official Al Sayassa, called for the Assad regime in Damascus to be toppled without delay because of its direct responsibility for the current terror and turmoil in Iraq. Kuwait fears the export of the instability to the emirate. Already, as Assad told Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak this week (see separate article in this issue), Al Qaeda agents and operatives are infiltrating Kuwait to reach Iraq.

Syria was not the only Arab recipient of a strong new American warning.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence experts and Gulf sources reveal that, a week before the start of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, a very senior Saudi official met an equally senior US government official in one of the Gulf States.

Their identities are a closely held secret. Not so the contents of their conversation, which our sources have discovered.

Asked by the Saudi official for a US government assessment of the perils facing the royal family, the American reply was as follows:

You misread your internal situation and our relations (between Washington and Riyadh). Our advice is this: In addition to the war against Al Qaeda – which you are not conducting in the proper professional manner – you must take a good hard look at events at home. You admitted to pro-reform riots and demonstrations in only two places, Riyadh and Jeddah. But our intelligence revealed protests in eight other locations – Buraidah, Katif, al-Qassim, Dahariyah, Abha, Najran, Taif and Jizan. If you choose to look the other way, go ahead. But don’t expect us to help you out when the demonstrations spread and turn into an anti-royalist tide too strong for you to contain unaided.

The reforms you have publicized are too slow and ineffective. You have already gone past the point where the major cities might have been placated with municipal elections – the dates of which, by the way, have still not been set. Now, you (the royal family) had better start thinking fast about elections for the Shura (the Saudi legislature). Some members will have to be elected directly by the voting public. They can no longer all be Crown appointees.

We are convinced that free elections are vital for the survival of the Saudi throne. Although our forces have been withdrawn from your country, you persist in seeing us as a potential savior. We might step in – depending on what is going on at the time in the kingdom and the region. But make no mistake, we no longer see you and your oil fields as the United States’ gas pump. You must stop thinking in terms of our dependence on you. That relationship is gone. It’s what you wanted. You demanded that we stop using your bases and air space – and we complied. Now we don’t need them anymore.”

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources in the Gulf, Saudi crown prince Abdullah said not a word when he saw a report of this conversation several hours later. What he did was to urge Syria to call a meeting of Iraq’s neighbors for the purpose of setting up a joint intelligence agency to pool Iraqi data.

Our sources believe the proposal was prompted by the Saudi sensation of being exposed and unprotected left by the candid message conveyed by the US official. Turkey, however, scuttled the plan (as reported in a separate article in this issue).

The October 31 deadline set by the International Atomic Energy Agency for Tehran to sign the Additional Protocol of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and halt uranium enrichment production came and went without the Iranians coming through on either commitment.

The Bush administration is highly skeptical about Iran ever taking those steps.

Furthermore, the “comprehensive” declaration of nuclear programs which Iran handed into the Vienna-based IAEA was diagnosed by its chairman Dr. ElBaradei as not only falling short but exposing previous Iranian violations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty it had signed.

In view of these lapses, the US administration has evolved a strategy to bring Tehran in line:

1. American intelligence and surveillance agencies are ordered to find out the exact situation on Iran’s centrifuges. The White House wants a full update on whether centrifuges are operating at the various nuclear sites and carrying out uranium enrichment, and whether Iran is making its own centrifuges or importing new ones – in which case from whom. The agencies are also asked to quantify the enriched uranium the Iranians have been able to produce.

2. In secret diplomatic exchanges, the Bush administration informed the international watchdog that its inspectors are expected to run a dramatic series of intrusive snap inspections at all of Iran’s nuclear sites in the coming three weeks. The inspectors must arrive without prior notification to the Tehran authorities, even at the risk of being thrown out.

3. Washington wants Dr. ElBaradei to convene an emergency session of the IAEA board to review Iran’s non-compliance with its signed treaties and failure to meet the October 31 ultimatum for coming clean on its nuclear weapons programs.

4. Once there is enough incriminating material in hand, the White House intends to take Iran’s nuclear violations to the UN Security Council and explore the possibility of imposing sanctions.

Iran’s rulers are aware of the US government’s intentions. Spiritual ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reiterated last week that Tehran would withhold its cooperation if faced with what it regards as excessive demands on its nuclear programs.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Iran experts have no doubt that the Iranians will throw up barriers in the path of international inspectors arriving unannounced, bringing the crisis to a fresh peak.

Last week, the new Chinese defense minister, General Cao Ganghchuan, visited Washington for the first time. He came at the head of a delegation of 12 senior officers.

The most senior was the Deputy Chief of Staff and military intelligence chief, Lt. General Xiong Guangkai, a familiar figure in Washington from dozens of previous visits. General Xiong stands out because he is one of the few Chinese army men who have fluent English.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in the US capital, the American hosts were most curious to find out what was happening at the decision-making level of the Chinese military since Jiang Zemin handed the presidency over to Hu Jintao last March, leaving himself in the Chair of the key Chinese Communist Party’s Military Commission. They wanted to know if the arrangement was working harmoniously or if the two men were at odds, a contest that would be bound to percolate through to every part of the armed forces.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in Washington report that, in the formal part of his visit, Cao gave no clue to the true state of affairs. However, in less formal conversations between Chinese generals and American army officers and members of the national security council – especially when attended by defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and adviser Condoleezza Rice - some of the Chinese guests were a little less discreet. From a hint here and there, it was possible to deduce that a quiet power struggle is in progress between the new and former Chinese presidents.

Jiang, when he retired earlier this year, would have chosen to retain a different position, but the only slot allowed him by the Chinese constitution was chairman of the military committee.

The result has been an unprecedented impasse in the corridors of power in Beijing.

For the first time, the party secretary is not ex officio head of the army. He may not make policy decisions without prior consent from the ex-president.

This places the new Chinese ruler in the invidious position of deputy to his predecessor in military affairs but Jiang Zemin’s superior in every other respect.

The anomaly has an unfortunate impact on the efficient functioning of the regime as a whole. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources report that for the first time, Chinese military leaders are deprived of access to the ruling echelons which make national policy and assign budgets. This would normally be the task of defense minister Cao. But he, like the rest of the military establishment, is wary of stepping on toes in the power struggle, even at the expense of reducing his own standing.

One sign of the rivalry at the top emerged in an incident in which some of the visiting officers spoke of the first manned Chinese space mission last month. Some eagerly praised President Hu’s active contribution to the mission’s success and the welcome he extended to the first Chinese man in space Yang Liwei. They omitted any mention of Jiang in this context.

A second group of officers moved away and shifted uncomfortably when their comrades sang the president’s praises.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Chinese experts interpret this occurrence as indicating that Hu Jintao is pulling ahead in the leadership tug-of-war over the armed forces and gathering a following in the party and armed forces which is gradually sidelining the former president. President Hu is beginning to embrace the prominence due to the paramount ruler of China. In the ceremonies surrounding the space launch, he stepped forward with easy authority while Jiang was nowhere to be seen. It is therefore only a matter of time before the new president loosens his retired predecessor’s grip on the armed forces and assumes full control himself.

The last vestiges of order are breaking down into chaos in Palestinian ruling circles as Yasser Arafat and a second would-be Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, battle it out for control.

After failing to wrest confirmation of the premiership from Arafat – he is still only a caretaker premier - Qureia, aka Abu Ala, decided that he did after all want to be invited to Washington to meet senior Bush administration officials.

This is reported by DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Palestinian sources and sources in the US capital.

However, the White House turned him down flat, reminding him how he snubbed a US invitation in late September, telling his aides he wanted no truck with Americans or Israelis.

He then tried to wangle an invitation for his candidate for international security minister, Nasser Yousef. That did not work either. Washington pointed out that Yousef doesn’t want the job. The man the Americans want in the key post of internal security is Gaza strongman Mohammed Dahlan who held the job in the former Abu Mazen government.

But that was not Abu Ala’s only problem with Washington this week.

A worried man, he confided to his cronies that he was plagued by a nightmare scenario.

It goes like this: Supposing, one fine day, the Americans say ‘Mister Ahmed Qurie, this morning the British, Israelis and Egyptians gave us the names of the murderers of the three CIA men killed by a remote-controlled bomb blast on October 15 in the Gaza Strip. We asked you for those names but you did not oblige. Here they are now and we want you to head down to the Gaza Strip today, order your security forces to pick them up and hand them over to us.

This is what Qureia is most afraid of. He knows he can’t bring them in himself. He will have to ask Rashid Abu Shbak, Dahlan’s successor as head of preventive security, to hand the men over to him as prime minister. But he knows Abu Shbak will laugh in his face.