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Saddam: No al Qaeda link
LONDON, England (CNN) -- Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, in a British TV interview aired on Tuesday, denied his government had any weapons of mass destruction or ties to the al Qaeda terrorist network. "If we had a relationship with al Qaeda and if we believed in this relationship, we won't be ashamed to admit it," Saddam said in an interview broadcast on Britain's Channel 4. "The answer is no, we do not have any relationship with al Qaeda." In his State of the Union address last week, U.S. President George W. Bush accused Iraq of having ties to al Qaeda -- the terrorist network that attacked New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. The interview with Saddam was conducted in Baghdad on Sunday by Tony Benn, a British anti-war activist and former Labour member of Parliament. Benn is vocal critic of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's pro-U.S. stance on Iraq. In 1990, Benn met with Saddam in an unsuccessful bid to avert the 1991 Gulf War. The United States and Britain are massing troops in the Persian Gulf for a possible war with Iraq unless it disarms. But Saddam said his nation has complied with U.N. resolutions requiring it to give up weapons of mass destruction. "Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction, and I challenge anyone who claims that we have them to come forward with their evidence and present it before public opinion," Saddam said. His comments were broadcast a day before U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is to present evidence to the U.N. Security Council supporting American allegations that Iraq is refusing to account for its stocks of chemical and biological weapons or give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Saddam said that if war comes, his people would fight "just like the British did during World War II." He said the drive for war was fueled by a U.S. desire to control Iraq's oil reserves, not concern over weapons of mass destruction. "We want to tell the people of Britain that Iraqis are brave people and they believe in human rights," he said. "They want to live in peace in this world, and they want their rights and dignity to be preserved."
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