Intelligence break led U.S. to tie envoy killing to Iraqi Qaeda cell

Washington - An intelligence breakthrough in the last several weeks made it possible for Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to set forth the first evidence of what he said was a well developed cell of Al Qaeda operating out of Baghdad that was responsible for the assassination of the American diplomat Laurence Foley last October.

The breakthrough was the work of a coalition of intelligence services from the United States, Britain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, according to a senior official from one of the coalition countries.

The Qaeda network based in Iraq has operated for the last eight months under the supervision of Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin who is also a veteran of the Afghan war against the former Soviet Union, Mr. Powell said.

Critical information about the network emerged from interrogations of captured cell members conducted under unspecified circumstances of psychological pressure, the coalition official said. But a lucky break also figured prominently — a satellite phone conversation gave away the location of a Qaeda operative, Mr. Zarqawi's deputy, driving out of Iraq.

Until about three weeks ago, Mr. Powell was said to be reluctant to go before the Security Council with a case connecting Al Qaeda with the Iraqi leadership. "Colin did not want to be accused of fabricating or stretching the truth," a coalition official said.

That all changed, the official said, when the interrogation of Mr. Zarqawi's deputy began to yield the first detailed account of the network's operations in Iraq, the Middle East and Europe.

The network was planning terrorist attacks in a half dozen European countries, Mr. Powell said, adding that recent police raids in France and Britain, where one police officer was killed, stem from the disruption of the Iraq-based network. About 116 operatives have been connected to it, he said.

When all the shards of intelligence came together today, along with new information on Iraq's secret programs to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, Mr. Powell's presentation was a more detailed and well-documented bill of particulars than many had expected.

Mr. Powell said that after Mr. Zarqawi fought against the Soviets, he returned to Afghanistan at the peak of Mr. bin Laden's influence in 2000 and ran a training camp. His leg injury during the allied military campaign in 2001 may have been serious enough for amputation by the time he reached Baghdad.

An expert in poisons and chemical weapons, Mr. Zarqawi is believed to have been providing training to the extremist group Ansar al-Islam. The group is based in northeastern Iraq in territory that is neither under the control of the Baghdad regime nor the main Kurdish groups that have divided up most of northern Iraq.

Soon after Mr. Zarqawi arrived, Mr. Powell said, "nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there."

He continued, "These Al Qaeda affiliates, based in Baghdad, now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they are now operating freely in the capital for more than eight months."

Coalition officials said that no group could operate in this manner without deep engagement with Iraq's ubiquitous intelligence services.

Mr. Powell withheld some critical details today, like the discovery by the intelligence agencies that a member of the royal family in Qatar, an important ally providing air bases and a command headquarters for the American military, operated a safe house for Mr. Zarqawi when he transited the country going in and out of Afghanistan.

The Qatari royal family member was Abdul Karim al-Thani, the coalition official said. The official added that Mr. al-Thani provided Qatari passports and more than $1 million in a special bank account to finance the network.

Mr. al-Thani, who has no government position, is, according to officials in the gulf, a deeply religious member of the royal family who has provided charitable support for militant causes for years and has denied knowing that his contributions went toward terrorist operations.

Private support from prominent Qataris to Al Qaeda is a sensitive issue that is said to infuriate George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence. After the Sept. 11 attacks, another senior Qaeda operative, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who may have been the principal planner of the assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, was said by Saudi intelligence officials to have spent two weeks in late 2001 hiding in Qatar, with the help of prominent patrons, after he escaped from Kuwait.

But with Qatar providing the United States military with its most significant air operations center for action against Iraq, the Pentagon has cautioned against a strong diplomatic response from Washington, American and coalition officials say.

The issue of whether Al Qaeda's terror network is linked with Iraq had been a contentious part of the debate over the justification for war. Some experts have sought to undermine the Bush administration's rationale for war by asking how a war against Iraq relates to the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The administration's theory is that the threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction could merge with the large-scale terror tactics of Al Qaeda to pose an unacceptable threat.

The unraveling of the Qaeda story in Iraq, still under way, took on some of the drama of an espionage thriller when, following the murder of Mr. Foley, the Qaeda deputy to Mr. Zarqawi suffered a lapse of communications discipline, a coalition official said. As he drove across northern Iraq to the Turkish and Syrian frontiers, he could not resist using his satellite phone to call Mr. Foley's murderers to congratulate them and to tell them he was on his way to meet with them.

"The captured assassin says his cell received money and weapons from Zarqawi for that murder," Mr. Powell said. In December, Jordan said it had two men in custody who had confessed to killing Mr. Foley on the instructions of Mr. Zarqawi.

Western intelligence is withholding the name of the captured Zarqawi deputy. However, they swiftly detected the satellite phone signal and tracked the operative to Syria and then into Turkey, where he was arrested and transported to one of the interrogation centers that the C.I.A. is operating in the region.

The decision to identify Mr. Zarqawi, still at large in Iraq, as the leader of a Qaeda cell will put his life in jeopardy because Mr. Hussein has insisted that Baghdad has no links with Osama bin Laden's network.

"A half hour after Powell mentioned his name, I'll wager he disappears or is killed," said a coalition official, recalling the death in Baghdad in 2001 of the Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, after intelligence reports suggested than he might be activating his own terrorist network. -- New York Times

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