'No link' between al-Qaida and Saddam

The commission investigating the September 11 attacks reported today that Osama bin Laden met a top Iraqi official in 1994 but that it found “no credible evidence” of a link between Iraq and al-Qaida in attacks against the US.

In a report based on research and interviews by the commission staff, the panel said that bin Laden explored possible cooperation with Saddam Hussein even though he opposed the Iraqi leader’s secular regime.

A senior Iraqi intelligence official reportedly met bin Laden in 1994 in Sudan, the panel found, and bin Laden ”is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded.”

“There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship,” the report said.

“Two senior Bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al-Qaida and Iraq.”

The panel’s findings appear to contradict Vice President Dick Cheney’s assertion on Monday that Saddam had ”long-established ties” with al-Qaida.

In making the case for war in Iraq, officials in President George Bush’s administration frequently cited what they said were Saddam’s decade-long contacts with al-Qaida operatives.

They stopped short of claiming that Iraq was directly involved in the September 11 attacks but critics say Bush officials left that impression with the American public.

The commission’s report was released at the beginning of the panel’s final two-day hearing on the development of the September 11 plot and the emergency response by the Federal Aviation Administration and US air defences.

“We’re going to talk about the evolution of al-Qaida and how they moved from one type of organisation in the late 1980s to a more fast-acting, poisonous organisation in the 1990s, more spread out and dispersed,” Democratic commissioner Timothy Roemer said before the hearing.

“We’ll be looking at the timeline as to whether or not we had an opportunity to deflect any of the airliners, and how decisions were made by the highest people in government,” he said.