Mombasa, Kenya ? Kenya will not heed Israeli demands to turn over some evidence in the attacks on an Israeli-owned hotel and an Israeli jetliner, saying Sunday it would conduct the probe alone. The Israeli defense minister said al-Qaida was the main suspect in the attacks.

The dispute threatened to delay the investigation into the suicide bombing Thursday of an Israeli-owned hotel and the failed downing of an Israeli charter jet moments earlier. American and Israeli leaders both questioned Kenya’s ability to conduct a thorough probe.

Kenyan police officials said Israeli authorities want to take pieces from a four-wheel-drive Mitsubishi Pajero that exploded outside the hotel on Thursday. The blast killed 10 Kenyans, three Israelis and the bombers. Authorities believe there were three bombers.

Israel also wants the launchers and missile casings from shoulder-launched rockets believed used in the failed attempt to shoot down the Israeli charter plane.

“None of this evidence is going back to Israel. This evidence is our responsibility,” said Charles Jamu, a Kenyan bomb specialist.

Raanan Gissin, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said from Jerusalem that Kenya had been cooperating “up to now,” but that the Kenyans weren’t prepared for the investigation.

“They were not geared to this kind of a threat or they don’t have the necessary resources or technological capabilities that would enable them to deal with that,” Gissin said.

Israel and the United States have pushed for a rigorous investigation in part because they believe it may have been orchestrated by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terror network.

Jamu, the bomb specialist, said investigators found parts of two gas welding cylinders which they suspect were fastened to the vehicle’s underside to cause a bigger explosion at the Paradise Hotel 12 miles north of Mombasa.

Khamis Haro Deche, a 39-year-old farmer, lives less than 2 miles north of the bombed Paradise Hotel near Mombasa, Kenya. Deche told police that he believes the bombers, who spoke with Arabic accents, stopped on his property last Thursday en route to the hotel.

One man, subsistence farmer Khamis Haro Deche, said a brown Pajero pulled into his yard near the hotel shortly after 8 a.m. last Thursday. He said the slight youngish man in the passenger seat told him in Arabic-accented and halting Kiswahili – the dominant language on the East African coast – that he and the driver were waiting for a friend coming from the direction of the hotel.

The farmer said the car had tinted windows – illegal in Kenya – and when he leaned inside to shake hands, he saw only two people – the driver, described as a stout middle-age man who did not speak, and the passenger, whom he described as nervous. Previous reports have said there were three terrorists.

Shortly after the car drove off in the direction of the hotel, there was an explosion that shook his house, he said. Survivors at the hotel said the blast occurred around 8:35 a.m. (11:35 p.m. CST Wednesday).

Deche was shown a picture of Babu Mohamed al-Misri, an Egyptian fugitive indicted in the 1998 embassy bombings and whose name has been linked to Thursday’s attack. His FBI-supplied mug shot was on the front page of the Sunday Nation, but Deche said al-Misri was not in the vehicle.

Although police were still holding several men from Pakistan and Somalia they had picked up from a boat in Mombasa’s port for questioning shortly after the attacks, there was no further comment Sunday on the progress of the investigation from inside Kenya.