Saddam's hate of US matched by distrust of al-Qaeda: Tariq Aziz

SADDAM Hussein "delighted" in the 1998 bombing of two US embassies in East Africa, but had no interest in assisting Osama bin Laden, one of his former aides has revealed.

The Iraqi despot's former foreign minister Tariq Aziz made the claims in FBI interrogations, reports of which have now been declassified.

"Saddam did not trust Islamists," Aziz said, according to handwritten notes of a June 27, 2004, interview, although he viewed al-Qaeda as an "effective" organisation.

The FBI notes are among hundreds of pages of interrogation records of top Iraqi officials released in response to a US Freedom of Information Act request. They come from an FBI operation codenamed Desert Spider meant to compile evidence of the Ba'athist regime's war crimes and to prove collaboration with al-Qaeda prior to the US-led invasion.

Saddam considered bin Laden and other Islamic extremists to be "opportunists" and "hypocrites," Aziz told the FBI, during one of four interrogations in Baghdad. "In Aziz's presence, Saddam had only expressed negative sentiments about UBL (sic: Usama Bin Laden]," the interrogation summary said.

The interviews, which took place between January and June of 2004, included some lighter moments. Aziz, who surrendered soon after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, confided he wanted to move to Detroit, which has a large Iraqi exile community. He himself belongs to Iraq's Christian minority.

Much of his questioning focused on the early years of Saddam's rule, starting in 1979, including his decision to go to war with Iran in 1980.

Illustrating Saddam's autocratic style, the go-ahead for war was marked by a "simple clap of the hands" by members of the National Assembly - no debate, no recorded votes - Aziz said. He called the eight-year war which killed hundreds of thousands, "the most foolish decision".

Without that war, Aziz speculated, Iraq could have become another Switzerland.

The 74-year-old Aziz, who became the international face of Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War, remains in Iraqi custody after being sentenced to 22 years in prison for crimes linked to his role in the former regime.

In Aziz's fourth 2004 interrogation, he was quizzed about Saddam's attitude toward al-Qaeda, including the group's link to the deadly 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

"As a dedicated anti-American, he delighted in it," the summary paraphrased Aziz as saying. "The United States had bombed his country and tried to kill him. It was, therefore, no surprise that Saddam was pleased."

Aziz said Saddam thought al-Qaeda was "an effective organisation," but he knew of no Iraqi effort to develop a relationship with al-Qaeda.