The Sunday Times reported that American intelligence tracking Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden through his satellite telephone ``lost'' the Saudi dissident when he switched off the instrument just before the missiles were launched. The Times also reported that Bin Laden is using Britain as a base to finance a global network of Islamic fundamentalist groups.

The US claims that the Al Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries factory in north Khartoum was making a chemical needed to manufacture a deadly nerve gas and was linked to Laden.

However, The Observer newspaper says that the US Government's claim had no basis. It says the US President ``knew he was bombing a civilian target when he ordered the attack on a Sudanese chemical factory.''

According to the report, Clinton ordered the attack right after the US military flew areconnaissance mission over the area to test for traces of gas and which returned a negative answer.

The British Government which ``strongly supported'' the US action, also appears to have known that the factory in Khartoum was not used for military purposes. Sudanese embassy officials in London reminded the BBC that the British ambassador in Khartoum had visited the Al-Shifa factory.

In fact, on March 10 this year, Foreign Office Minister Tony Lloyd in reply to a question in the House of Commons that Sudan had built a chemical warfare facilities said the government ``cannot validate those reports'' and that it was ``not aware of any fresh or substantiated evidence.''

Replying to another question, on March 19 this year, on a report that Sudan had nuclear weapons capability, Lloyd said, ``we are monitoring the evidence closely, but to date there is no evidence to substantiate the claims, .... and we know some of the claims to be untrue.'' Today, the British Foreign Office said these statement were madeon the basis of information believed to be true at the time.

A spokesman for the FO said that Britain's continuing ``whole-hearted'' support for the US action was based on Clinton's televised statement claiming that the US had compelling evidence that the factory in Sudan was being used to make chemical weapons. The spokesperson refused to comment on The Observer report, and evidence from the site, that this may actually be the opposite of the truth.

The Observer report also quotes British professionals who worked at the factory in Sudan recently and say that it simply could not have had a military purpose.

Tom Carnaffin, who worked as technical manager for the plant's owners between 1992 and 1996, told The Observer: ``I have intimate knowledge of that factory and it just does not lend itself to the manufacture of chemical weapons.'' He said, ``Unless there have been some radical changes in the last few months, it (the factory) just isn't equipped to cope with the demands ofchemical weapon manufacturing.''

Carnaffin said the factory's owners, the Baaboud family, were in the process of selling it to a Saudi Arabian: ``The factory was being sold to a Saudi Arabian. They are allies of the Americans. I don't think it would look very good if the factory was also manufacturing weapons for Baghdad.''

An independent film maker from Belfast who said he visited the plant last year while making a promotional video for Sudan's ambassador to London also told The Observer that there was no evidence to back the US claim, and that the Al Shifa factory was no ``secret'' site. British journalists reporting from Khartoum in the aftermath of the missile attacks also report that this is the one place in Khartoum to which access is unhindered.