BBC News with Sue Montgomery.

A man has been arrested in New York on suspicion of planning to

blow up

the city's Federal Reserve building. Quazi Nafis, a 21-year-old from Bangladesh, was seized as he tried to

detonate

what he thought with a van full of explosives. Barbara Plett reports from Washington.

A statement issued by the Department of Justice says the 21-year-old Bangladeshi man Quazi Mohamad Nafis came to American in January with intention of carrying out a terrorist act. But one of the people he will allegedly try to recruit to help him

turned out to be

in FBI informer, so he was monitored closely. Police say at no time was the public in any danger. In fact in what was clearly a

sting operation

and FBI Agent posing as an al-Qaeda facilitator supplied him with what he thought were explosives. The agent was with him on Wednesday morning when he assembled what he thought was 1,000 pound bomb, and allegedly tried to detonate next to the Federal Reserve bank. He was arrested immediately afterwards.

An Iranian American man has pleaded guilty to charges of participating in a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States. American prosecutors said Manssor Arbabsiar attempted to recruit a Mexican

drug cartel

to bomb a Washington restaurant while the Saudi ambassador dining there last year. He told a court in New York that he conspired with members of the Iranian military.