US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he has seen no "strong, hard evidence" linking former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein with Al-Qaeda, backing away from his pre-war assertions that contacts between the two went back over a decade.

"I have seen the answer to that question migrate in the intelligence community over a period of a year in the most amazing way," he told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations after being asked what Saddam's connection to Al-Qaeda was.

No 'strong, hard evidence' of Saddam-Qaeda connection: Rumsfeld

Rumsfeld said Monday that there were differences in the intelligence community as to what the relationship was.

"To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two," he said.

The nexus between terrorism and the Iraqi regime was a key point in the US effort to persuade the world that Saddam Hussein had to be dealt with after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

In September 2002, Rumsfeld said the United States had "credible" information that Al-Qaeda and Iraq had discussed safe havens and non-aggression agreements, and that Al-Qaeda leaders have sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire weapons of mass destruction.

Rumsfeld admitted that he had relied on the Central Intelligence Agency for his information in the past, and appeared to blame the intelligence reporting for the way the relationship between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein was portrayed.

"I just read an intelligence report recently about one person who's connected to Al-Qaeda who was in and out of Iraq. And it is the most tortured description of why he might have had a relationship and why he might not have had a relationship," he said.

"There are reports about people in Saddam Hussein's intelligence service meeting in one country or another with Al-Qaeda people for one person or another, which may have been indicative of something or may not have been," he said.

"It may have been something that was not representative of a hard linkage," he said.

Rumsfeld added, however, that Saddam and his regime were "not Little Sisters of the Poor." Iraq was on the State Department's terrorist list and made payments for Palestinian suicide bombings, he said.

"The relationships between these folks are complicated. They evolve and change over time. In many cases, these different networks have common funders.

"In many cases, they cooperate not in a chain of command, but in a loose affiliation, a franchising arrangement, almost, where they go do different things and cooperate," he said.

He said most of Al-Qaeda's senior leaders had sworn an oath to Osama bin Laden.

"And to my knowledge, even as of this late date, I don't believe (Abu Mussab al-) Zarqawi, the principal leader of the network in Iraq, has sworn an oath, even though ... they're just two peas in a pod in terms of what they're doing," he said.

Zarqawi's reported presence in Baghdad before the war has been cited in the past by the US administration as evidence of a link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda.

In his comments two years ago, Rumsfeld said the presence of senior Al-Qaeda leaders in Baghdad was backed by "solid evidence," and there was reliable reporting of contacts over the previous decade that had grown in frequence after 1998.

© 2004 AFP

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