MI6 warned of Syrian-sponsored attack on American target

[What follows is a brief extract from an article by Cal McCrystal about David Yallop that was published in The Independent on this date in 1993:]

Stranger still was a meeting with Abu Nidal in a suburb of Tripoli, the Libyan capital. At 10am, the bald, bloated terrorist was drunk and talkative, acknowledging an Iraqi role in the 1982 attempted murder of Slomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador to London, and suggesting that a Syrian-sponsored attack on an American target was imminent.

Returning to London, Yallop warned MI6 of the threat. 'To my astonishment the MI6 agent was far more interested in Nidal's drinking habits.' Less than two weeks later Pan Am Flight 103 from Frankfurt to New York was blown up over Lockerbie.