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WASHINGTON,Friday (AFP) Top terrorist organizations met recently in the tri-border area of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay to discuss new attacks against US and Israeli targets, CNN reported.

The meeting of representatives of al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and other extremist Islamic groups took place in the Paraguayan city Ciudad del Este, CNN said, quoting unnamed intelligence sources.

"We had intelligence that pointed to increased terrorist activity," head of Argentina's intelligence agency Miguel Toma told CNN.

"It is not unrealistic that there could be some action to prevent or to react to an attack on Iraq. So we need to react because of the global conflict," he said.

"This was a central theme discussed in recent trips to Washington, Toma told the television network. "There is a direct correlation between terrorism here and in the United States."

Meanwhile Brazilian and Paraguayan authorities adamantly denied any knowledge of such a meeting.

"I have no idea what Toma is talking about," Paraguayan Ambassador to the United States Leila Rachid told AFP. "Since September 11 we have had regular

intelligence sharing cooperation between the South American cone countries and the United States, and this is the first I've heard of it. It is categorically untrue. There was no such summit."

Like wise Jaoquim Mesquita, chief of police of the Brazilian town Foz do Iguasu in the tri-border area, said he had never heard of a terrorist meeting in the area.

Nevertheless the tri-border area has long been considered a hub for terrorist activities, and therefore the focus of several Western intelligence agencies since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

"The life-blood of terrorism is money ... and the triple border is a sort of magnet, attracting a lot of illegal activism money laundering, weapons sales, drug trafficking, fake documentation, counterfeiting -- which can be used to earn money for other ends," US ambassador to Paraguay David Greenlee said in Spanish in an interview with AFP.

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