Senior source denies report of assassination attempt of Egypt’s VP Omar Suleiman

A senior Egyptian security source denied on Saturday a report carried in US media of an assassination attempt on Egypt's vice president Omar Suleiman. The source, who did not want to be named, said there was no truth to the report at all.

Meanwhile, a German diplomat who first said an assassination attempt was made on Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman has retracted his statement. Wofgang Ischinger, host of the Munich Security Conference taking place Saturday in Germany told CNN he "was led to believe that we had a confirmed report but in fact we didn't."

Fox News earlier reported that a failed assassination attempt on Egypt's vice president, Omar Suleiman, in recent days left two of his bodyguards dead.

Such an attempt on the life of Suleiman would mark an alarming turn in the uprising against the regime of President Hosni Mubarak, who only recently named Suleiman as vice president in an effort to quell the unrest and possibly line up a successor, Fox News said.

A senior Obama administration official confirmed that the attack happened soon after Suleiman was appointed, on January 29. The official described it as an organized attack on the VP's motorcade.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs declined to address the assassination reports when asked earlier by Fox News. "I'm not going to ... get into that question," Gibbs said.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday unconfirmed reports of an assassination attempt on Egyptian vice-president put into "sharp relief" the challenges of the standoff between government and protesters.

"That news report brings into sharp relief the challenges we are facing as we navigate through this period," Clinton told a security conference in Munich after being told of the report.

But a US official said the secretary of state's comments did not constitute a confirmation of the news report, which was denied by the senior Egyptian security source.

Suleiman, the former Egyptian intelligence chief, was appointed by President Hosni Mubarak a week ago, the first time the 82-year-old leader has named a deputy in three decades in power.