Astana (Kazakhstan), June 18 (Reuters): Russian President Vladimir Putin, in comments sure to help US President George W. Bush, declared today that Russia knew Saddam Hussein had planned terror attacks on US soil and had warned Washington.
Putin said Russian intelligence had been told on several occasions that Saddam’s special forces were preparing to attack American targets inside and outside the US.
“After the events of September 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, Russian special services several times received information that the official services of the Saddam regime were preparing ‘terrorist acts’ on the US and beyond its borders,” he said.
“This information was passed on to our American colleagues,” he said. He added, however, that Russian intelligence had no proof that Saddam’s agents had been involved in any particular attack.
The Kremlin leader’s comments were certain to bolster Bush, whose campaign for re-election in November is under pressure from the Iraq crisis.
The US leader has been on the defensive at home for insisting — against the findings of an independent commission — that Saddam had links with al Qaida, the militant group behind the 2001 airline attacks in the US that killed 3,000 people and prompted the US war on terrorism. Putin’s remarks were all the more unusual since Russia had diplomatic relations with Saddam’s Iraq and sided with France and Germany in opposing the invasion.
Speaking to reporters in the capital of ex-Soviet Kazakhstan, he went out of his way, however, to say that Russia's view of the US-led invasion of Iraq was unchanged.
“Our position has not changed. We indeed passed this information on to our American partners but we consider that there are rules, defined by international law, for using force in international affairs and these procedures were not observed,” he said. It is not the first time that Putin, who has forged a strong personal bond with Bush despite opposing him diplomatically over Iraq, has come to his defence on the issue.
At a summit of G8 world industrialised powers at the US resort of Sea Island last week, Putin chastised Democrats for attacking Bush on Iraq.
