9/11 panel rebuts Cheney

2004-07-07 07:42

Washington - A US commission probing the September 11 attacks ratcheted up its public dispute with the White House late on Tuesday, saying it was aware of no new information proving the existence of co-operative pre-war ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda, despite the administration's claims to the contrary.

The brief statement came in response to comments by vice president Dick Cheney, who suggested the 9/11 commission might have not had access to all available information of the subject.

But the panel made up of 10 prominent Americans representing both major political parties disagreed.

"After examining available transcripts of the vice president's public remarks, the 9/11 commission believes it has access to the same information the vice president has seen regarding contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq prior to the 9/11 attacks," the statement said.

The terse repartee was the latest salvo in a series of testy exchanges triggered by the commission's finding that the ousted Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network had no "cooperative relationship."

The finding, made public last month, undercut a key argument used by the administration of President George W Bush to justify its March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The administration insisted in the lead-up to the war that al-Qaeda and the Saddam Hussein regime had developed a "sinister nexus" that might result in terrorists gaining access to weapons of mass destruction.

But in a report released on June 16, the commission said al-Qaeda leader bin Laden was actively opposed to Iraq's secular government and at one time even sponsored an anti-Saddam Islamist group based in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Later, authorities in Sudan, where bin Laden had found refuge in the early 1990s, reportedly persuaded the al-Qaeda chief to drop that support and attempt to make amends with Baghdad, according to the document.

As part of these efforts, a senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan and finally met bin Laden in 1994, the report said.

But nothing appears to have come out of this courtship, according to the commission.

Bin Laden is said to have requested space for establishing al-Qaeda training camps in Iraq as well as assistance in arming the groups, "but Iraq apparently never responded," said the commission.

- AFP