The Basque interior department said the new explosives had been ready for "immediate" use and only lacked a detonator.

Just hours before the find was disclosed, the Spanish prime minister warned Eta that the government and people would not be intimidated after the weekend bombing of a Madrid airport car park. The blast killed a 35-year-old Ecuadorean immigrant, whose body was found in the rubble on Wednesday and was sent back to his country on a Spanish military plane last night.

In a rare gesture, Eta's outlawed political wing, Batasuna, expressed its "deepest sorrow" for the Ecuadorean's death. On Wednesday, its members said they were caught off guard by the bombing and insisted the peace process was not dead because Eta had not formally declared it was ending the truce.

"Security forces and intelligence sources have confirmed that the coup rumors were spread by the groups of people linked to the New Year's bombs. They aim to create a state of confusion and chaos," interim Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont told reporters Friday.

"The investigators have concluded that the bombers were men in uniform, both green and khaki," said Defense Minister Boonrawd Somtas, referring to the uniforms worn by military and police services.

Surayad said police had recovered two security videotapes of some of the bombers and warned the country should be ready for continued violence. The eight small bombs Sunday killed three people and wounded nearly 40 as the Thai capital celebrated the New Year.

A tape seen by an Associated Press reporter showed the back of the head of a man with closely cropped hair who dropped something and then walked away. Police said the tape was recorded by security cameras at one of the bomb attack sites, in Nonthaburi on the northern outskirts of Bangkok.

Authorities have not released the other tape to the press.

Army commander Gen. Sondhi Boonyaratkalin, leader of the September coup and head of the Council for National Security, called the reports of another coup "impossible" in an interview on Thai television.

Col. Sansern Chaengkamnerd, a council spokesman, also told The Associated Press Thursday that the coup rumors were unfounded.

"There have been transfers of troops but it is for the purpose of providing security in Bangkok," he said.

There has been a noticeable increase in the number of troops on the streets of Bangkok, at airports, bus and train stations since the Sunday night bombings.

The military has suggested Thaksin supporters in the military and police have been trying to destabilize the country in a bid to take back power.

Thaksin has denied involvement.

There has also been speculation the military may not be satisfied with the performance of the interim civilian government it installed after the coup, and may prefer to take complete power for itself rather than work behind the scenes.

Sondhi denied the military council was responsible for the bombings.

"I have risked myself to do what the people wished. Why should I do that?" he said in a TV interview. "I love my people and my country."

The interim government, which is supposed to relinquish power after an election expected later this year, has drawn criticism for failing to solve several major problems, including an Islamic insurgency in the south and the rising value of Thailand's currency, which has hurt exports.

The failure to restore peace in the south and the Bangkok bombings raised fears the insurgency may be spreading north from the country's three southernmost, Muslim-dominated provinces. Nearly 2,000 people have died from violence in the past three years.

Surayud acknowledged Thursday his government received intelligence in advance about two of the bombing targets, but said he didn't know who the culprits were.

Speaking to the interim legislature, he said there was only "a very small chance" that the blasts were linked to the southern violence.

"It is related more to people with ill intentions, and those who want to cause violence who are in our area, which is Bangkok," he said.

Surayud on Thursday said authorities should be ready for future attacks, though he did not indicate any specific threat: "This isn't happening only now, but we have to be prepared to face a new threat that could harm people's lives in the future."

Finance officials from the two countries met last month for talks on the debt. Storchak had previously said he expected Russia to write off much of the debt but that the final amount would depend on Pyongyang's ability to pay.

A South Korean foreign ministry official said he believes no agreement has yet been reached in the talks.

North Korea borrowed 3.8 billion roubles from its ally the Soviet Union since the 1960s to build power plants.

Russia's Vneshtorgbank and North Korea's Trade Bank agreed to re-estimate the debt at eight billion dollars including interest, the daily said.

"Russia backed down from its earlier position that it won't continue eocnomic cooperation unless the North repays all its debt, in order to persaude it to take part in trilateral economic cooperation involving Russia and South Korea and return to the six-party nuclear talks," it quoted a diplomat as saying.

The three-year-long negotiations aimed at scrapping North Korea's nuclear programmes resumed in December for the first time in 13 months but they ended without setting a date for the next round.

The negotiations resumed after North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in October and the UN Security Council imposed sanctions.

Most of the 971 so called "suspicious contact reports" from US defense contractors and security and counterintelligence staff in 2005 were linked to the East Asian region, said the study, a copy of which was obtained by AFP.

Prepared by the Defense Security Service Counterintelligence Office, the unclassified document said "the majority of reported targeting originated from East Asia and the Pacific, which accounted for 31 percent of all reporting.

"The apparent across-the-board surge in activity from East Asia and Pacific countries will continue in the short term as gaps in technological capability become apparent in their weapons development processes," it said.

A total of 106 countries were linked in the report to "suspicious activities" pertaining to secret military technology in 2005, up from 90 countries a year earlier, the report said. The Middle East emerged second after East Asia with 23.1 percent of the cases, followed by Eurasia with 19.3 percent and South Asia with 13.2 percent.

In one case, a foreign" woman "seduced" an American male translator to give her his password in order to log on to his unclassified network, the report said, without giving particulars. "Upon discovery of this security breach, a computer audit revealed foreign intelligence service viruses throughout the system, it said.

The study did not identify countries.

"Identifying particular countries will make it a classified document," a spokeswoman for the Defense Security Service told AFP.

The report said however that lasers and optics technology and aeronautics appeared to be "priority technology targets" for the East Asian region. South Asia was more keen on obtaining secrets pertaining to signature control technology.

After terrorism, the greatest threat to US national security at home is espionage, officials say.

Many American state agencies have cited China as the top counterintelligence threat, with as many as 3,500 Chinese "front companies" reportedly gathering intelligence, especially highly-prized information technology.

Just last month, a Chinese national was charged in California with stealing military trade secrets and using them in demonstration and sales proposals to Beijing as well as the air forces of Malaysia and Thailand.

Xiaodong Sheldon Meng, 42, allegedly stole military combat and commercial simulation software and other materials from his ex-employer Quantum3D, a San Jose-based company.

Meng, a resident of Cupertino in California and facing 36 "economic espionage" charges, was said to have stolen trade secrets from Quantum3D "with the intent that they would be used to benefit the foreign governments of China, Thailand, and Malaysia."

"The alleged economic espionage and theft and export of trade secrets such as these -- visual simulation training software that has military application, no less -- has real consequences that could jeopardize our country's military advantages in the world," said US attorney Kevin Ryan.

The US Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive in an annual report to Congress in August last year underlined the challenge of protecting sensitive US technologies from foreign theft, citing globalization and the openness of the US economy to both trade and labor flows.

While the FBI had expanded its counterintelligence cooperation with key defense contractors, that may not be enough, said Peter Brookes, a former senior Pentagon official.

"We've clearly got to do more to prevent foreign spies from nicking sensitive American information for ill-gotten commercial, military -- or worse yet -- terrorist gain," he said.

Source: Agence France-Presse