A top U.S. official said Pakistan's intelligence services had thwarted a plot to blow up President Pervez Musharraf, although Pakistani officials earlier denied any such attack had been planned. Testifying Thursday at a joint hearing of the Senate and House intelligence committees into last year's Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said: "President Musharraf's intelligence service thwarted a bombing attempt on him yesterday."

His statement followed a report in Thursday's Washington Post that Pakistani police and intelligence officials had arrested an Islamic militant who was plotting to assassinate Musharraf.

Earlier Thursday Pakistani Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider had denied local media reports that militants arrested Wednesday had planned to attack Musharraf while he was at a defense exhibition in the southern city of Karachi.

Musharraf attended the exhibition Monday night and on Tuesday.

Haider said the militants had been involved in an earlier foiled plot to assassinate Musharraf in late April, as well as in a car bomb attack on the U.S. consulate in Karachi in June that killed 12 people.

"They are involved in the U.S. consulate bombing for sure and they earlier had attempted -- not this time -- on the president's life," Haider told reporters.

Musharraf, speaking in Islamabad Thursday after opening a two-day conference on peace and security in South Asia, also denied there had been any such plan.

"There is no threat to my life. God is great. He saves all," he told reporters.

The Washington Post report said Sharib Ahmad, 30, was arrested in Karachi late Tuesday with five other men at a house less than a mile from the defense exhibition site.

"In their sole aim to kill President Musharraf these militants had collected 70 hand grenades, 40 rocket-propelled grenades and rockets and... bomb-making chemicals at their hide-out in Karachi," the Post quoted a Karachi police official as saying.

Pakistan said late Wednesday it had arrested seven "most wanted terrorists" in Karachi, including the suspected mastermind of a suicide bombing which killed 11 French naval engineers and three Pakistanis in the port city on May 8.

Thursday, Kamal Shah, police chief of southern Sindh province of which Karachi is the capital, named the suspected ringleader as Sharib alias Asadullah and said he had masterminded the U.S. consulate bombing.

PHOTO CAPTION

Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf speaks at a conference in Islamabad September 19, 2002. A top U.S. official said Pakistan's intelligence services had thwarted a plot to blow up President Pervez Musharraf, although Pakistani officials earlier denied any such attack had been planned. REUTERS/Mian Khu