Global Policy Forum

By Julian Borger, Richard Norton-Taylor and Michael Howard

President Bush used his state of the union address to paint a terrifying picture for the American people of another attack like September 11 - but this time with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Tony Blair reinforced the message yesterday by telling the Commons: "We do know of links between al-Qaida and Iraq. We cannot be sure of the exact extent of those links."

However, a number of well-placed sources in Whitehall insisted there was no intelligence suggesting such a link. "While we have said there may possibly be individuals in the country [Iraq] we have never said anything to suggest specific links between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein," said one.

Establishing the link is essential to persuading the public that Iraq represents an imminent threat, and President Bush insisted that hard evidence in the shape of "intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody" proved the connection was real.

But the intelligence analysts in the US and Britain on whose work the president's claim was supposedly based say the connections are tangential at best, and the available evidence falls far short of proving a secret relationship between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden. One intelligence source in Washington, who has seen CIA material on the link, described the case as "soft" and "squishy".

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

That case relies heavily on a man called Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian member of the al-Qaida leadership who was wounded in the leg in the US-led bombing of Afghanistan. In late 2001, according to US intelligence sources, he sought medical treatment in Iran but was deported and fled to Baghdad, where his leg was amputated. Telephone calls he made to his family in Jordan were intercepted. The question is whether Saddam Hussein's regime knew who he was and whether it offered him any assistance. "Yes, we have him telling his family I'm here in Baghdad in hospital, but he's not saying: 'And by the way, I'm getting all this help from Saddam,' " said a well-informed source in Washington.

Ansar al-Islam

According to Jordanian intelligence, Zarqawi left Baghdad after his surgery and travelled to northern Iraq, possibly through Iran, where he joined up with Ansar al-Islam, a militant Islamist group comprising some 700 Kurdish members controlling a string of villages on the Iranian border of the Kurdish self-rule area. The group harbours up to 120 al-Qaida members including Lebanese, Jordanians, Moroccans, Syrians, Palestinians and Afghans, and is fighting a turf war with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

The group is thought to be the creature of Osama bin Laden's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Its leader, Mullah Krekar, was detained by Dutch police last September after arriving on a flight from Iran because Jordan had asked for his extradition, accusing him of drugs trafficking. He now enjoys refugee status in Norway.

While evidence of Ansar al-Islam's links to al-Qaida are comparatively strong, its links with President Saddam remain largely circumstantial. Villages in the area around Ansar territory have reported seeing Iraqi Mukhabarat agents making contact with Ansar operatives. There are also reports that TNT seized from Ansar during one of their assassination attempts on Kurdish officials was produced by the Iraqi military and that arms are sent to the group from areas controlled by President Saddam.

About a dozen senior members of Ansar trained at a camp in Afghanistan which specialised in chemical and biological weapons, such as ricin.

The Ansar-Baghdad debate in US intelligence circles reflects a rift between the CIA and a special intelligence office set up in the Pentagon by the under-secretary for defence, Douglas Feith. The CIA tends to be sceptical and hostile to the Iraqi National Congress which has produced many of the recent defectors. The Pentagon is readier to listen to the INC's defectors, and has established a separate channel of information to the White House, outside the control of the CIA director, George Tenet.

Ramzi Youssef

Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy defence secretary, sent James Woolsey, a former CIA director, to Swansea, in search of evidence to back up the theory that Ramzi Youssef, convicted of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre, was the same person as an Iraqi student who had been at the Welsh university. Mr Woolsey returned empty-handed. "The two sets of fingerprints were entirely different," says a source familiar with the investigation.

Mohamed Atta

British officials with access to intelligence dismiss claims by Washington hawks that Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of the September 11 terrorists, met an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague just months before the attacks. The allegation, first made by Czech officials, was further investigated by the Czech government. President Vaclav Havel told the White House the allegation could not be substantiated. The CIA director, George Tenet, told Congress in October that the CIA could also find no evidence.

Mujahedin e Khalq

Saddam Hussein has had links with some terrorist groups including Mujahedin e Khalq, an Iranian dissident organsiation based in Iraq. British sources interpret the murder in Baghdad of the former Palestinian terrorist leader, Abu Nidal, last August as evidence of President Saddam's concern about accusations he is harbouring terrorists, especially one on whose loyalty he could not rely.

Interrogations

President Bush said the evidence for a Baghdad-Bin Laden connection also came from "statements by people now in custody". But according to a US official familiar with CIA thinking on the issue, the senior al-Qaida members in captivity, such as Abu Zubeidah and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, have not implicated Iraq. Others among the hundreds of al-Qaida suspects in custody in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere "may either be saying what we want to hear, or they want us to go to war with Iraq. Or it may be true. We just don't know", the official said.

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