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| Iraq-Jordan |
| US feared Iraq gave arms to Sudan |
| 2004-07-24 |
| President Bill Clinton thought Iraq might have provided chemical weapons to Sudan in the late 1990s under a co-operative arrangement between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, the investigation into the September 11 attacks revealed. While the commission stood by its previous staff judgment - that there was no evidence of "a collaborative, operational relationship" between Iraq and al-Qaeda - it revealed new evidence that the Clinton and Bush administrations both worried about the potential links. Mr Clinton ordered an air strike in August 1998 against the al-Shifa chemical plant in Sudan after officials in the office of Richard Clarke, then White House director of counter-terrorism, concluded that Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, had access to deadly VX nerve gas allegedly being produced at the plant. Mr Clarke later said traces of a precursor chemical for VX detected near the plant were "the exact formula used by Iraq" and speculated that Iraq was helping al-Qaeda acquire such weapons. Sudan has long insisted that al-Shifa was harmless and the commission says there is no independent evidence of the existence of the VX precursors at the plant. The question of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda was among the more controversial addressed by the commission. The report says that in 1998 Iraq sought closer ties with Mr bin Laden and even offered him a safe haven. The al-Qaeda leader declined, thinking that he would be better off in Afghanistan. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 US feared Iraq gave arms to Sudan Now, for the legs..... |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2004-07-24 2:42:33 PM |