U.S. Sees Some Iraq Contact With al-Qaida

By JOHN SOLOMON
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration has evidence of some prewar Iraqi contacts and training with al-Qaida, based on prisoner interrogations, defector statements and documents collected in Iraq and Afghanistan, but no proof of joint terror operations, according to U.S. officials.

Most of the administration's public assertions have focused on a supporter of Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He is believed to have run terrorist training camps in both Iraq and Afghanistan and received medical care in Baghdad.

U.S. officials have accused al-Zarqawi of trying to train terrorists in the use of poison for possible attacks in Europe, running a terrorist haven in northern Iraq and organizing an attack that killed an American aid executive in Jordan last year.

But U.S. officials familiar with intelligence say the administration has evidence of other contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida. These contacts spiked in 1995-96, when bin Laden was living in Sudan, which he left for Afghanistan in early 1996; and in 1998, while his terror network was in Afghanistan, and his operatives bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa.

The officials, all of whom spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said there was credible evidence of more than a half-dozen high-level contacts between Iraqi intelligence agencies and leaders of bin Laden's organization but no direct evidence of Iraqi government sponsorship of al-Qaida attacks.

"There is nothing yet that remotely resembles state sponsorship by Iraq," one recently retired intelligence officer said.

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