A senior member of al-Qaeda has told U.S. security authorities that the terrorist network planned to carry out attacks against 2002 World Cup soccer matches in Japan, informed sources in Tokyo said Saturday.

The United States has provided Japanese authorities with information provided by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the No. 3 official in the terrorist organization, who is believed to have played a major role in the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, the sources said.

Mohammed said the plan for attacks against Japan was never carried out because al-Qaeda did not have a support network in Japan.

Al-Qaeda warned late last year that Tokyo would be attacked if members of Japan's Self-Defense Forces set foot in Iraq. Japan recently dispatched Ground Self-Defense Force troops to the city of Samawah, in southern Iraq, to assist in reconstruction work there.

Mohammed was born in Kuwait in either 1964 or 1965 and was arrested by U.S. authorities in Pakistan last March.

He graduated from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in the U.S. in 1986 and visited Japan in 1987 as a business intern at a Japanese company.

During his three-month stay in Japan, Mohammed studied how to maneuver a rock-drilling machine at a construction machinery manufacturer in Shizuoka Prefecture and later bought about 150 such machines, according to Japanese security authorities.