2008 Woodie Awards
Powell: Iraq harboring al-Qaida network
Issue date: 2/6/03 Section: News Digest
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UNITED NATIONS--Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network headed by a top associate of Osama bin Laden that is developing chemical weapons and behind many terrorist operations in the Middle East and Europe.
Powell's assertion, backed by what U.S. officials insist is ironclad evidence, provides the most detailed link between Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaida terrorist network made public to date by any Bush administration official.
Powell's detailed description of contacts between the two, complete with charts and photos, was the biggest surprise of his presentation on Iraq to the U.N. Security Council.
Saddam's regime and terrorist networks form a "sinister nexus," the secretary of state said, although he was careful not to allege that Iraq and al-Qaida carry out joint terrorist operations or that Baghdad had a role in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
That reflects continued hot debate at the top of the U.S. government over the extent of Iraq's connection to al-Qaida.
But Powell, with CIA chief George Tenet seated behind him, said that Baghdad had given sanctuary to a network headed by bin Laden associate Abu Musab Zarqawi, an expert in poisons who was wounded in the U.S. assault on Afghanistan and went to Baghdad for medical treatment.
Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, has been linked to another terrorist cell broken up by British authorities last month that was apparently planning an attack with the deadly poison ricin. He also has been implicated in the murder in Amman, Jordan, last October of Lawrence Foley, an employee of U.S. Agency for International Development.
Powell also said that::
* The Zarqawi network has established a training camp for poisons and explosives in northeastern Iraq, in an area controlled by a radical Islamic group known as Ansar al-Islam. The group operates in Kurdish territories that are outside Saddam's direct control.
The CIA believes Zarqawi may still be in northern Iraq, said a U.S. official, who requested anonymity.
During the two months that Zarqawi spent in Baghdad beginning in May 2002, nearly two dozen extremists converged on the Iraqi capital.
They "now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they have now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months," Powell said.
U.S. intelligence officials said intercepted e-mails revealed that Zarqawi in Baghdad had maintained contact with the alleged terrorist cell in Great Britain believed to be planning an attack with ricin.