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HONOLULU (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Friday it appeared the man suspected of trying to bomb a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas was a member of al Qaeda and had been trained and equipped by the Islamic militant network.

Defending his administration's counterterrorism efforts amid scathing Republican criticism, Obama said he received preliminary results of the reviews he ordered into air travel screening procedures and a "terrorist watchlist system" and expected final results in the days to come.

Obama, who is on vacation in Hawaii, had called for an immediate study of what he termed "human and systemic failures" that allowed 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to get on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on December 25 allegedly with explosives in his clothes.

"The investigation into the Christmas Day incident continues, and we're learning more about the suspect," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address, posted on the White House website on Friday local time.

"It appears that he joined an affiliate of al Qaeda, and that this group -- al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America," Obama said.

The president's comments were his most explicit to date tying the suspect with the al Qaeda group.

Republicans have accused Obama, a Democrat, of mishandling the incident and not doing enough to prevent attacks on the United States.

Appearing on the defensive, Obama used much of his address to outline his administration's actions to keep the country safe, including withdrawing troops from Iraq, boosting troop levels in Afghanistan and strengthening ties with Yemen, where the suspect spent time before the attack.