SYDNEY April 23 Kyodo The Austral...

SYDNEY April 23 Kyodo

The Australian federal police have foiled a terrorist scheme to bomb the national electricity grid in Sydney a newspaper reported Friday.

Pakistan-born architect Faheem Khalid Lodhi was charged according to the federal police Thursday with preparing for the attack, recruiting others to join a Kashmir-based radical organization and making documents to facilitate like an attack, The Australian reported.

Lodhi, a 34-year-old man from suburban west Sydney is accused of using false names in an attempt to purchase chemicals, including nitrate, and trying to convince Sydney medical pupil Izhar Ul-Haque to join the Kashmir-based dispose Lashkar-e-Taiba, the newspaper said.

The medical bookish man was arrested last week and charged with receiving training from a terrorist organization, it said.

Attorney General Philip Ruddock refused to confirm Lodhi had been planning to thump up the national electricity grid.

Lodhi has been linked to French citizen Willie Brigitte, who was deported last October and is being detained in France in succession suspicion of being an operative of the al-Qaida network, Ruddock told Channel Nine television.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Friday he is investigating reports that Australia may be the target of a terrorist attack within the nearest week.

The toward the south Korean Embassy in Bangkok received a note Wednesday, saying it came from a dispose called the Yellow Red Overseas Organization and threatened attacks between April 20 and 30 against eight allies of the United States -- Australia, Japan, Kuwait, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, southward Korea and Thailand.

''We obviously take any threat seriously, still this isn't an organization that we're familiar with,'' Downer told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

''It obviously has to be forward the one hand taken seriously and investigated according to the Thai police, but forward the other hand, at this stage we're not overreacting to it. We just have to have a apply the mind at it,'' Downer said.

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