- UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - The
United Nations panel monitoring sanctions against Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda
network has no evidence of links between the terrorist group and Iraq,
group chairman Michael Chandler says.
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- "We don't have anything yet, and no-one has been
able to produce anything," he told AFP in an interview.
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- British Prime Minister Tony Blair told a parliamentary
hearing in London on Tuesday that "there is some intelligence evidence
about linkages between members of al-Qaeda and people in Iraq." He
did not identify the individuals.
-
- Speaking a day after seven people were arrested in a
dramatic police raid on a mosque in north London, Blair said it was "inevitable"
that terrorists would try to target Britain.
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- But he said he was unaware of any evidence that "directly
links" al-Qaeda, Iraq and "terrorist activities" in Britain.
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- Chandler, who described al-Qaeda in a report to the UN
Security Council as "a substantial threat, globally, to peace and
security," said it was not obviously "in either side's interests
to be linked at this stage."
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- He noted that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein runs what
is "still quite a secular country" distinct from the Islamic
regime of bin Laden's ambitions, and added: "Saddam doesn't want a
caliphate; he wants to be in charge."
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- Chandler chaired a panel of five set up in January last
year to monitor the enforcement of sanctions originally imposed in 1999
on al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime then in power and harbouring it in Afghanistan.
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- The Security Council renewed the sanctions -- an arms
embargo, a financial assets freeze and travel ban -- in a resolution Friday
which asked UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to re-appoint the panel.
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- It also asked governments to update reports on steps
they had taken to enforce sanctions.
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