Baghdad made peace plea just before war, Pentagon admits

JUST days before US-led forces invaded Iraq, officials claiming to speak for a frantic Iraqi regime made a last-ditch effort to avert the war, but US officials rebuffed the overture, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

An influential adviser to the US Defence Department received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman indicating that Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal, they said.

The chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service and other Iraqi officials had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction and offered to let US troops and experts do an independent search, said officials, who discussed the matter only on condition of anonymity.