A key al Qaeda suspect has admitted plotting the bombings of the USS Cole and two US embassies in Africa, according to a Defence Department transcript of a hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

More than 200 people were killed in the simultaneous attacks on the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Seventeen American sailors were killed and dozens injured when suicide bombers steered an explosives-laden boat into the guided missile destroyer Cole on October 12, 2000.

Waleed bin Attash said under questioning about his role in the attacks: "I participated in the buying or purchasing of the explosives.

"I put together the plan for the operation a year and a half prior to the operation, buying the boat and recruiting the members that did the operation."

Alleged to be a former bodyguard of Osama bin Laden, bin Attash, a Yemeni who was born and raised in Saudi Arabia, is one of 14 "high-value" prisoners transferred last year to military custody at Guantanamo Bay after being held by the CIA at a secret location.

Hearings are being conducted in secret by the military as it tries to determine whether the detainees should be declared enemy combatants who can be held indefinitely and prosecuted by military tribunals.

If, as expected, the 14 are so declared, they could be tried under the military commissions law signed by George W Bush in October.

Another of the 14, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, admitted nearly three dozen plots, including the September 11 attacks, according to transcripts released last week.

Bin Attash's transcript is the fourth the military has released.

Bin Attash, who was captured in 2003 and is now in his late 20s, told a hearing that he met the man who carried out the embassy bombings just hours before the operation, according to the transcript.

He said he was the link between bin Laden and his deputy, Sheikh Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, who authorities say worked with bin Attash on planning the Cole attack.

Bin Attash also said he was with bin Laden when the Cole was attacked while refuelling in the Yemeni port of Aden.

US intelligence documents allege bin Attash is a "scion of a prominent terrorist family" that includes his father and younger brother Hassan, who has been held at Guantanamo since 2004, when he was 17. Several brothers attended al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and two have been killed, the US says.

A US judge last week found Sudan's government liable for the attack on the Cole for having given al Qaeda sanctuary.

Bin Attash also helped choose the September 11 hijackers and made two US flights to assess security procedures, authorities allege. Bin Laden wanted bin Attash to be one of the hijackers on September 11, but that plan was foiled when bin Attash was arrested in April that year.-AP