MOSCOW — Lending support to the Bush administration's claim that Saddam Hussein's regime posed a threat to the United States, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin said Friday that his intelligence services had received several reports before the war last year that Iraq was planning terrorist attacks against U.S. targets.
Putin said Russia had no reason to believe that Iraq had actually engineered any attacks. He also did not draw a connection between the regime and Al Qaeda, as President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have continued to do this week despite findings by a commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks that there was "no credible evidence" that Iraq and the terrorist network had cooperated.
Speaking with reporters during a visit to the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, Putin said Russian agents had received information after the Sept. 11 attacks that Iraqi agents were plotting strikes against American targets, both at home and abroad.
"After the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, Russian special services several times received information that the official services of the Saddam regime were preparing terrorist acts on the United States, and beyond its borders against the U.S. military and other interests," he said.
"This information was passed on to our American colleagues," he said.
Traveling with Bush aboard Air Force One on Friday, a White House spokeswoman said the U.S. had "ongoing cooperation with the Russians on a variety of matters, including intelligence matters," but she refused to discuss specifics.
"We've declassified as much information as we can to talk about the threat that Saddam Hussein posed," the spokeswoman said, adding that Hussein was "a threat to America, to the world."
State Department officials said they could not specify what the Russian intelligence indicated, but Adam Ereli, a deputy department spokesman, said the two countries "have a very good and close record of cooperation in the field of counter-terrorism."
Putin's statement came a day after an unnamed Russian intelligence officer made a similar revelation to the Interfax news agency. The officer said his nation's intelligence services had received a report in early 2002 that Iraqi secret services were organizing attacks against the U.S.
