MANILA, 18 May 2003 — Philippine officials said yesterday they were trying to verify a claim by a Filipino man who said he was offered money in Saudi Arabia to bomb one of the residential compounds hit by deadly blasts this week.

The man, whom authorities refused to identify for security reasons, was undergoing a series of interrogations at an undisclosed site in Manila by intelligence officials, monitored by a US Embassy staffer, a police intelligence official said. Efforts by reporters to contact US Embassy officials yesterday were not immediately successful.

The man called Philippine radio station DZMM on Friday and claimed he hurriedly returned to the Philippines from Riyadh last month after a group of men offered him a large amount of money if he planted a bomb in a residential compound teeming with Americans where he worked as a mechanic.

He said the four Arab men, who used different cars every time they visited, first offered him a cigarette last October in a store outside the compound where he worked. They later asked him to carry out the bombing in exchange for $1 million, saying “Americans were bad because they were getting our oil and money,” the radio station quoted the man as saying. The man said he declined the offer and fled home because he feared for his life.

“It’s too early to tell and too early to decide if we’ll accept his statements hook, line and sinker,” said a Filipino police intelligence officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He said, without elaborating, that police authorities were working with their foreign counterparts to verify the man’s claim.

The Department of Foreign Affairs issued a statement saying it would also try to verify the claim but suggested it was harboring doubts. “This is, to say the least, a very unusual story,” foreign affairs spokesman Victoriano Lecaros said.

Philippine police said they would secure the man while he was being questioned and show him pictures of Al-Qaida members suspected in Monday’s bombings, which tore through expatriate residential compounds and killed many, including three Filipinos.

One Filipino police intelligence officer in Manila said that if the man is telling the truth, he could provide a wealth of information that could help identify the attackers in Riyadh.