WASHINGTON, Sept 10 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Top U.S. officials have dropped efforts to link the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network or other extremist organizations, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.

And in coming days, U.S. President George W. Bush will, instead, present "extensive" new evidence that Saddam Hussein is preparing to deploy weapons of mass destruction, reports The New York Daily News.

Despite a redoubled effort, the Central Intelligence Agency has been unable to find hard evidence linking the Iraqi leader to global terrorists, the Post said, quoting senior intelligence officials and outside experts with knowledge of discussions within the U.S. government.

Intelligence analysts have concluded that there is not enough evidence linking the Iraqi leader to al-Qaeda members who have taken refuge in northern Iraq, the newspaper said.

Neither is there enough evidence to confirm an alleged April 2001 meeting in Prague between an Iraqi intelligence agent and Mohamed Atta, one of the suspected September 11 hijackers.

"It's a thin reed," a senior intelligence official told the Post, describing the information on both cases.

However, the stress upon Saddam Hussein’s links to al-Qaeda will not be completely dropped, just placed on hold.

"At some point we will certainly make the case concerning Iraq and its links to terrorism," a senior administration official said Monday. "We still have to develop it more."

In his speech Thursday, September 12, to the United Nations, U.S. President George W. Bush is expected to stress Iraq's alleged efforts to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons - rather than any links to terrorism - as justification for a possible military attack against Baghdad, according to the Post.

"This is his best opportunity to address the international community on this threat," an official said. "He will take full advantage of it."

"There's a vast volume of evidence on a multitude of fronts," an administration official told the Daily News. "It runs the gamut of all his weapons of mass destruction, and the new activity since 1998 has been extensive."

Iraq is doing "a whole lot more" than just seeking aluminum rods to enhance the weapons-grade uranium needed to build nuclear weapons, officials told the paper.

The White House plans to show Congress some of the evidence, which includes satellite photos of several sites in Iraq. The newspaper said it was unclear how much information could be shared with Congress without compromising intelligence sources.

"If you brief 535 members of Congress, ... you're likely to have a leak in very short order," Vice President Dick Cheney said in an interview broadcast during "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" on Monday.

"We are certainly going to share a good deal of information with selected members of Congress," he said.

The last time Iraq planned an attack against a U.S. target was in April 1993, when agents failed in their attempt to murder former president George Bush - the current president's father - during a visit to Kuwait, CIA sources told the Post.

The then president Bill Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack on Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad in retaliation.