Additional reporting by Khaled Mamdouh, IOL Staff

WASHINGTON, September 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - While top U.S. officials claimed Sunday, September 15, 2002, that Washington detected links between Iraq and the al-Qaeda network, a former U.S. National Security Advisor said that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is on al-Qaeda's "black list".

Speaking on U.S. NBC TV Sunday, Brent Scowcroft said, " I believe that he (Saddam Hussein) is on the list, prepared by Bin Laden (wanted head of al-Qaeda), of persons to be killed".

Scowcroft, one of the leading planners of the 1991 Gulf War, added that "Hussein is a secular, not an Islamic leader. He is a communist President".

However, Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice gave the strongest indications yet that Bin Laden's group had been in contact with the Iraqi government, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Powell told CBS television "there is no smoking gun that would link the regime in Baghdad to 9/11."

Rice told Fox News Sunday, "there are clearly links between Iraq and terrorism and there are al-Qaeda personnel that have been spotted in Baghdad.

"There is some evidence that there have been various meetings concerning Iraqi personnel and al-Qaeda personnel," she said.

However, she added that the United States was not suggesting that "Saddam Hussein somehow planned and plotted 9/11."

While indicating that the investigation into Iraqi links with international terrorism continued, Rice said, "Let's be clear. There's plenty to indict Saddam Hussein without a direct link to 9-11. He clearly has links to terrorism."

In Cairo, meanwhile, a famous Islamic lawyer flatly rejected any links between al-Qaeda and Saddam. "It is impossible for (Sheikh) Osama to deal with a tyrant like Saddam. The Iraqi President has always been against Muslims and Muslim causes.

"Everyone knows what he has done to Muslim Kurds in Iraq. The U.S. has known that all along, and it did not bother. Now, they (the Americans) are using it to achieve their own agenda," Montasir al-Zayyat, lawyer of Islamic groups in Egypt, told IslamOnline Sunday, September 15, 2002.

U.S. officials have remained largely silent on contacts between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's organization.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday, September 10 that despite a redoubled effort, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been unable to find hard evidence linking the Iraqi leader to global terrorists, quoting senior intelligence officials and outside experts with knowledge of discussions within the U.S. government.

Intelligence analysts 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.

According to the London newspaper The Sunday Telegraph the British government promised to make a case against Iraq that reveals the links to al-Qaeda.

The (alleged) evidence includes proof that Saddam allowed al-Qaeda and bin Laden to train on his territory, the weekly newspaper claimed.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is to release his evidence on September 24, the day set for a parliamentary debate on Iraq.