WASHINGTON, Oct 3, 2001 (AFP) -- A plan for Sudan to arrest Osama bin Laden in 1996 fell through when the United States found it unable to put him on trial and failed to convince Saudi Arabia to take him, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.

The newspaper said the US administration of then-president Bill Clinton had secretly spoken with the Sudanese government on a plan to seize the Saudi-born extremist -- who is now blamed for the devastating September 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon -- but let the idea go after evaluating the situation, according to US officials.

Bin Laden had been living in Sudan at the time, after being expelled from Saudi Arabia.

"Had we been able to roll up bin Laden then ... we probably never would have seen a September 11th," the newspaper quoted an unnamed US government anti-terrorism official as saying.

The newspaper said the United States had not, at that point, compiled sufficient evidence to try bin Laden on its own territory, despite him being seen by intelligence officers as a rising threat.

Former US national security advisor Sandy Berger told the newspaper that the US constitution would have made it difficult to win a conviction. "Our first choice was to send him some place where justice is more 'streamlined'," he said.

The newspaper said Clinton and his officials hoped that place would be Saudi Arabia, bin Laden's birth country which had forced him into exile in 1991 and stripped him of his citizenship three years later.

But Riyadh had refused, the Washington Post said, leaving US officials to simply make sure Sudan expelled bin Laden, tearing him away from his business and extremist contacts in the country.

Bin Laden made his way to Afghanistan in 1996, where he is believed to have holed up ever since.