Iraq offered to hand up 1993 bomb suspect

Iraq has rejected US claims of ties to a terror group believed to be linked to al-Qaida, and has offered to give Washington a suspect in the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said Baghdad had no links to Ansar al-Islam nor an alleged al-Qaida fugitive Abu Musaab Zarqawi, who has been connected with the murder of a US diplomat in Jordan and poison plots in half-a-dozen European countries, including Britain.

Sabri, in a 13-page letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, said Washington had rejected Baghdad’s offer to hand over Abdul-Rahman Yasin, a suspect in the 1993 bombing who is on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

Sabri’s letter again denied any link between Iraq and Zarqawi or Ansar, saying both operated in northern Iraqi areas under the control of Kurdish groups allied to Washington – and beyond Baghdad’s reach.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell has accused Ansar of harbouring al-Qaida fugitives from Afghanistan, implying that the group would not have offered al-Qaida refuge without the consent of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

“The government of the Republic of Iraq stresses that no Iraqi government or non-government party had any meeting in the past or currently with this person (Zarqawi),” the letter said.

Baghdad found no evidence Zarqawi had entered Iraq through any border point “whether using his own name or other aliases the Jordanians have provided”.

They are still looking for other fugitives, whose entry into Iraq have also not been proved, it said.