Afghan intelligence director Amrullah Saleh said the man, named as Botan Akram Tawfiq Horami from the Kurdish area of northern Iraq, confessed that Taliban extremists had trained him with the intention of killing the president or his deputy.

Saleh said the 22-year-old, loaded with 10 kilogrammes of C-4 plastic explosives, was seized Friday as he staked out Fahim's residence in the upmarket Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul, home to many foreign embassies.

He said Horami, also armed with a pistol, admitted he had earlier missed an attempt to kill Karzai when he arrived in the Afghan capital too late to carry out a plan to throw himself on the president's car.

"(He was) a suicide bomber, a terrorist who wanted to kill his excellency President Hamid Karzai or Defence Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim," Saleh said, displaying the explosives worn by Horami concealed in a waistcoat.

He said that Horami claimed to have spent time in the disputed region of Kashmir, before travelling to Afghanistan via Pakistan and that he "bluntly admitted what he was tasked to do".

Saleh added that the attack had links with the former ruling Taliban regime, toppled late last year by a US-led military operation, and possible connection to the al-Qaeda terror network of Osama bin Laden.

"(The attack) has very clear links to Taliban leaders and some Pakistani extremist groups.

"What we have is solid fact that he has been linked to Taliban leaders, he has been working with Pakistan extremist groups. We are not ruling out the position that al-Qaeda is behind the whole operation."

According to Saleh, the operation to foil the attack was based on intelligence gathered solely by Afghan authorities, however he refused to reveal how the information was obtained.

Karzai narrowly avoided an assassination attempt on September 5 when a Taliban-linked gunman pumped bullets into the president's motorcade during a visit to the southern city of Kandahar.

Fahim, a powerful member of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance resistance movement which continues to dominate the government, survived an attempt on his life earlier this year in the eastern city of Jalalabad.

Friday's arrest followed an explosion, initially blamed on a rocket, in a nearby residential area of Kabul.

Commander Tony Grubb of the International Security Assistance Forceconfirmed there were no casualties from the incident late Thursday but said it was unlikely a rocket was involved.

"The report concluded that evidence available at the scene points to a small charge of about 500 grammes or less. The charge appears to have been placed on the roof of a bus shelter and traces of TNT were found.

"The matter has now been handed to police to continue and conclude the investigations."

On Monday, Afghan police also uncovered a plot to destroy the main power station supplying Kabul.

The capital has faced ongoing unrest since the defeat of the hardline Taliban regime late last year by a US-led military force.

A series of bomb attacks culminated in a blast on September 5 in which 30 people were killed.

Intelligence officials said the bombs were the work of Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants or former Afghan prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's extremist Hezb-i-Islami party.

SPACE.WIRE