America will not be terrorised, asserts Obama

WASHINGTON - Declaring that America will not be terrorised, US President Barack Obama Tuesday pledged federal agencies would work aggressively to determine whether a Pakistani-American suspect in the failed Times Square bombing case had any connection to terror groups.

US authorities arrested Faisal Shahzad, 30, a naturalised American citizen from Pakistan, for driving the car bomb to the famed Times Square, at 11.45 p.m. Monday at New York’s JFK International Airport minutes before he was to flee to Pakistan.

In a speech Tuesday morning to business leaders in Washington, Obama called the plot in New York as an “attempted terrorist attack”, and said: “Justice will be done, and we will continue to do everything in our power to protect the American people.”

The Times Square incident, he said, was “another sobering reminder of the times in which we live”.

“As Americans and as a nation, we will not be terrorised,” Obama said. But the United States “will be vigilant” and “we will not cower in fear. We will not be intimidated.”

The White House later said Obama had placed congratulatory phone calls to two vendors “who first reported the suspicious vehicle” and to two New York police officers “whose actions led to the evacuation of the area and the immediate response”.

Obama called vendor Duane Jackson on Monday and made calls Tuesday morning to vendor Lance Orton and officers Wayne Rhatigan and Pam Duffy “to thank them for their vigilance”, press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement.

Also Tuesday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised the dogged law enforcement efforts but also said the city won’t tolerate any backlash against Pakistanis or Muslims.

“This was an act designed to kill innocent civilians and strike fear into the hearts of Americans,” Bloomberg said. “And I’m happy to say that it failed on both counts. We will not be intimidated by those who hate the freedoms that make the city and this country so great.”