Western intelligence officials are playing down the significance of documents appearing to show that Saddam Hussein’s regime met an al-Qaeda envoy in Baghdad in 1998 and sought to arrange a meeting with Osama bin Laden.
”We are aware of fleeting contacts [between Baghdad and al-Qaeda] in the past, but there were were no long-term official contacts,” a well-placed source told the Guardian. ”The documents do not take things further forward”
British security and intelligence agencies have persistently dismissed attempts by hawks in the White House to link Saddam’s regime with al-Qaeda, a link which would help London and Washington to argue that Iraq had posed an imminent threat.
According to the documents found by UK newspaper the Sunday Telegraph an envoy from al-Qaeda went to Baghdad from the Sudanese capital Khartoum in March 1998 — two years after Sudan, under pressure from Saudia Arabia, ordered Bin Laden out and he returned to Afghanistan.
Intelligence officials acknowledge that al-Qaeda and Iraq shared a mutual hostility towards Saudi Arabia and the US after the 1991 Gulf war, but they say Saddam distrusted the terrorist network and there was little love lost between Bin Laden, an Islamist fundamentalist, and Saddam’s secular regime.
Intelligence sources also played down the significance of documents found by another UK newspaper the Sunday Times in the Iraqi foreign ministry which suggest France gave the regime regular reports on its dealings with American officials.
The sources described them as ordinary diplomatic traffic from the Iraqi ambassador in Paris. – Guardian Unlimited Â