President Bush claimed yesterday that the US had fresh evidence of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, as Washington prepared to release its secret files on Saddam Hussein in a bid to gain global support for a war.
The claim was a key element in the president’s state of the union address to the nation last night. The speech was intended to put the US on a war footing in the expectation that a war is all but certain, and help persuade an increasingly sceptical American public.
President Bush did not go into detail about the allegation of a connection between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden but, according the White House, it was built largely on the questioning of al-Qaeda detainees. The cooperation included chemical weapons training.
The secretary of state, Colin Powell, is expected to reveal further US intelligence on the link at a climactic meeting of the United Nations security council, which American officials hope to arrange for next week. The meeting would be followed on February 14 by another, possibly final, assessment of Iraqi compliance by UN weapons inspectors.
At that session, Powell is expected to produce aerial photographs as evidence that Iraq has been hiding its weapons programmes from UN inspectors. The photographs will show activity at suspect sites just before the inspectors’ arrival, and will be part of a package of evidence the White House is in the process of declassifying.
While Bush was gearing his people up for war, Iraq threatened for the first time to take the battle against US-led troops outside its own boundaries. In a chilling echo of the Gulf war, Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister, said: ”If there will be an attack [by US troops] from Kuwait, I cannot say that we will not retaliate.”
Kuwait’s defence minister Sheik Jaber Mubarak al-Sabah immediately responded, warning Baghdad that it would ”pay dearly” if it threatened the security of his country.
Saddam Hussein delivered an equally ominous message to a meeting of his military commanders, warning them not to contemplate betrayal.
His comment were also aimed at anyone else in Iraq, especially the Shia Muslim population, that might be thinking of treason.
It is extremely rare for President Saddam, who surrounds himself with heavy security, suggesting that he is anxious about a possible assassination attempt, to voice publicly his fear of treason. He warned that ”times of inattention”, such as war, ”may produce a treacherous act”.
According to the Iraqi press, the president was replying to a commander who raised the possibility that the US will enlist the help of traitors.
The British government assessment a year ago was that a coup against President Saddam was unlikely because his intelligence services were ruthless and ubiquitous.
But over the last week both the US and Britain have encouraged the idea of growing dissent among the Iraqi public and the armed forces.
Previewing last night’s speech, the White House representative Ari Fleischer said there had been contacts between ”senior Iraqi officials and members of the al-Qaeda organisation going back for quite a long time”.
He added: ”We know too, that several of the detainees, particularly some of the high-level detainees, have said that Iraq provided some training to al-Qaeda in chemical weapons development.”
Powell was considerably more cautious. ”We see no reason not to believe that such contacts and the presence of al-Qaeda elements or individuals in Iraq is a reasonable assumption, and we have some basis for that assumption,” he said on Monday.
His presentation of US intelligence on Iraq had originally been pencilled in for this week, but it will now be delayed at least until Bush meets Tony Blair at Camp David on Friday.
Bush has alleged a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda before. In October, he claimed that a member of the al-Qaeda leadership with experience with chemical and biological weapons had received medical care in Baghdad during the US bombing of Afghanistan.
At the time, US intelligence sources said the man in question was Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian who was treated for an injured leg. They believe may have helped the tiny Muslim militia Ansar al-Islam experiment with chemical and biological weapons in its fight against the anti-Saddam Kurdish movement, PUK, in northern Iraq.
The US also believes that Zarqawi was behind the assassination of its diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman, while the CIA is reportedly exploring a link between Zarqawi and the Algerians arrested in Britain on suspicion of plotting a terrorist attack with toxic ricin.
However, a US intelligence source said the connection between the al-Qaeda leader and Baghdad remained unclear. – Guardian Unlimited Â