U.N. Panel Finds No Iraq Link to Al Qaeda

UNITED NATIONS —  A U.N. committee has found no evidence of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, but the panel said Thursday that the terrorist network can look to new recruits of suicide bombers in Morocco and elsewhere.

The committee, charged with reporting on Al Qaeda and remnants of Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban regime, released a 42-page report on the state of international terrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

“Nothing has come to our notice that would indicate links between Iraq and Al Qaeda,” said Michael Chandler, one of five outside experts who prepared the report for the committee.

“That doesn’t mean to say it doesn’t exist. But from what we’ve seen, the answer is ‘no,’ ” he told a news conference.

Chandler said the first he had heard of any alleged links was during a presentation to the Security Council in February by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s purported ties to Al Qaeda were used by the Bush administration as a justification for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March.

Another member of the investigating panel, Abaza Hassan, said: “It had never come to our knowledge before Powell’s speech. We never received any information from the United States for us to even follow up on.”

Powell said Hussein’s government had allowed a senior Al Qaeda operative, identified as Abu Musab Zarqawi, to operate in Baghdad for months.

Zarqawi previously had been accused of operating only in northern Iraq, an area not under Hussein’s control. Zarqawi has been indicted for murder in the death of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan in October.

The committee’s report said that despite huge strides by the United States and others in capturing Al Qaeda leaders, recent attacks in Morocco and elsewhere showed that ideological followers “were still willing and able to strike at targets of their choosing.”

The committee has drawn up a list of more than 150 individuals and one group associated with the Taliban, plus 80 individuals and 91 groups associated with Al Qaeda. States are asked to freeze their financial assets, among other sanctions.

The report also noted that no one on the list had been seized crossing any border and that no weapons destined for terrorist groups had been confiscated at international frontiers. Al Qaeda and the Taliban are “still able to acquire adequate quantities of weapons and explosives where and when they need them,” the report said.

Chandler recommended that the list, which he said contained many misspellings, include anyone who had participated in Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and “those of associated terrorist groups.”

This recommendation is bound to run into criticism, if implemented, as an abrogation of civil liberties. At the moment, any Security Council member can put anyone on the list, and recourse for those listed is difficult.