Saddam linked to terrorism

2004-05-16 21:05

Moscow - US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said in an interview aired on Sunday in Russia that she was convinced that the deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was linked to a global terror network.

"First of all, Saddam Hussein is really linked to terrorism," Rice told NTV television, in comments translated into Russian on her second day of a trip to Moscow.

"He paid $25 000 to each of the suicide bombers' families. But we never claimed that Saddam Hussein organised, or even knew, of what was supposed to happen on September 11," the station quoted Rice as saying.

Her comments were recorded on Saturday following her meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and aired on Sunday evening on the NTV channel, one of Russia's last stations to fall under government control during Putin's rule.

Russia opposed the war in Iraq, but has vowed to work together with the United States to help resolve the ongoing conflict, without sending its troops into the war zone.

Rice, a fluent Russian speaker who specialised in post Cold War relations between Moscow and Washington, appeared to have used her visit to Moscow to defend the US-led war.

"Saddam Hussein was the most dangerous person in the world, who was based in the most dangerous region in the world, and President Bush said after September 11 that the United States must not allow for even a possibility of such a threat," she told NTV.

Rice, who on Sunday left Moscow to fly to Berlin, called the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US troops a "stain on the United States" but denied the scandal had undermined Washington's moral authority in the Middle East.

- AFP