A Malaysian pilot recruited by al-Qaeda to fly a hijacked airliner into the tallest building on the US West Coast pulled out of the plot when he realised it was a suicide mission, security officials in South-East Asia said today.

Further details emerged of the plan to target the iconic 73-storey US Bank Building in Los Angeles, revealed by President Bush yesterday in an address to rally support for the War on Terror.

Terrorism experts in Malaysia said that Zaini Zakaria, an engineer, was among three men being trained to launch the planned second-wave of Osama bin Laden's assault on the United States, supposed to take place a few months after the atrocities of September 11 2001.

Zaini, 38, visited al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in 1999, where he met senior figures in the terrorist network including Riduan Isamuddin, the organisation's leader in South-East Asia, also known as Hambali.

When he returned to Malaysia, Zaini enrolled in a flying school and obtained a license to fly a small plane. He then began making inquiries in Australia about obtaining a license to fly a jet.

The official revealed that the recruit had never been told precisely what his mission would entail: when he saw coverage of the September 11 attacks and realised it was a suicide operation he severed his ties with the militants.

He returned to civilian life, doing a series of casual jobs, before he surrendered himself to Malaysian authorities in Kelantan in December 2002, apparently because he was worried about the health of a relative.

He has been detained without trial ever since, due to his alleged links with Jemaah Islamiyah, a proscribed terrorist organisation regarded as al-Qaeda's South-east Asian wing.

Zaini told his interrogators that "he was not prepared to die as a martyr, so he backed out", a senior police officer has told the Associated Press news agency. The officer said that Zaini "didn’t want that kind of Jihad".

He also said that plan never appeared close to the stage where it could be put into execution.

The possible "second wave" attack on America was first mentioned in June 2004, in the US National Commission report on the September 11 attacks. The report quoted Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the reputed terror mastermind who was captured in 2003, as admitting that "only three potential pilots were recruited for the alleged second wave," and identified them as Zacarias Moussaoui, Abderraouf Jdey, and Zaini.

However, Mohammed told his US interrogators that "he was too busy with the 9/11 plot to plan the second wave of attacks," the report said.

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