(AFP) Malaysia was a primary operational launchpad for the Sept 11 attacks on the United States, Newsweek magazine reported, citing secret Federal Bureau of Investigation data.

The report said US intelligence sources believe a former Malaysian army captain, Yazid Sufaat, who was a member of the Islamic extremist group Jemaah Islamiah, helped develop a support network for chief terror suspect Osama bin Laden in Malaysia and throughout Southeast Asia.

Last December, Malaysian investigators discovered that Sufaat had ordered four tonnes of ammonium nitrate, a powerful explosive used in truck bombs, Newsweek said.

Authorities believe Sufaat and his fellow Jemaah Islamiah radicals planned to blow up the US and Israeli embassies in Singapore, and have since detained dozens of the group's members, including Sufaat, according to the latest edition of Newsweek , due out on newsstands today.

"Kuala Lumpur is the perfect place for Arabs to lie low," the magazine quotes an intelligence source as saying.

No visas needed

The city attracts many Arab tourists, and Malaysian law allows Muslims to enter and exit the country without visas.

In January 2000, Sufaat held a meeting in his Kuala Lumpur condominium with top associates of bin Laden in accordance with instructions given to him by an Indonesian cleric with ties to al-Qaeda, bin Laden's terror network, the magazine reported.

Two of those in attendance - Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhamzi - later surfaced in the United States where they enrolled in flight school and later piloted the plane that struck the Pentagon, the report said.

Later in 2000, Sufaat hosted French national of Moroccan descent Zacarias Moussaoui, the only man charged so far in connection with the Sept 11 attacks, according to the report.

Sufaat gave Moussaoui the employment letters discovered in his Minneapolis apartment and agreed to pay him US$2,500 a month during his stay in the United States along with a lump sum of US$35,000 to get him started, Newsweek reported.