No solid proof yet linking Saddam to al-Qaeda

The Bush administration has portrayed the war on Iraq as a continuation of the war on terrorism launched after al-Qaeda's September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, which killed 3,000 people.

Iraq posed an imminent threat to US security because Saddam could provide al-Qaeda with the feared chemical, biological or nuclear "weapons of mass destruction," US officials said in the months leading up to the war.

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On September 25, 2002 Bush warned against the danger that "al-Qaeda becomes an extension of Saddam's madness." National security counselor Condoleezza Rice added that there "clearly are contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq." The next day Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said there was "bulletproof evidence" of an al-Qaeda-Saddam link.

It was not until February 5 that Secretary of State Colin Powell clearly spelled out the US case.

Speaking at a special UN Security Council meeting, Powell said there was a training camp in northern Iraq where terrorists were learning to use chemical weapons. He added that Saddam was protecting Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, accused of ordering the 2002 murder of Laurence Foley, a US diplomat in Jordan.

The training camp Powell mentioned was located in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq -- outside Saddam's jurisdiction -- and belonged to Ansar al-Islam, a radical fundamentalist Islamic group. The site was stormed by a combined force of Kurdish freedom fighters and US Special Forces in early April.

Ansar prisoners interviewed in Tawela, northern Iraq by AFP soon after the attack, insisted their group had no links to Saddam.

"I am a Kurd, all Kurds hate Saddam Hussein, he destroyed my family," said one of the prisoners. He and another survivor had been forced to join Ansar, which established rigid Islamic rules in its area. The prisoners also said they had seen no Arabs or other foreign Islamist fighters in their ranks.

US officials have yet to release evidence that the camp was used for building chemical weapons.

Meanwhile an alleged associate of Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi standing trial in Germany has denied any connection with al-Qaeda.

Shadi Mohd Mustafa Abdellah told a court in Duesseldorf, Germany on July 2 that he belonged to a group called al-Tawhid, which was "on its own and had nothing to do with al-Qaeda."

The alleged terrorist, a 26-year-old Jordanian, is charged with plotting attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets in Germany.