Moscow and London — A little-known Palestinian who isn't even on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's most-wanted list was portrayed by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday as the head of an extensive terrorist network that stretches from Baghdad to Manchester and ties Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden.
In his address to the United Nations, Mr. Powell said a Jordanian-born man known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi runs a deadly network that is connected to al-Qaeda and sheltered by the Iraqi regime. The network, he said, was behind the recent alleged ricin poison plot in London and last fall's assassination of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley in Jordan. Mr. Powell also linked it to an alleged terror cell in Manchester, where a police officer was killed in a raid last month.
The failed ricin plot, Mr. Powell said, is evidence of how dangerous Iraq's alleged chemical weapons stores could be in the hands of terrorists. Mr. Zarqawi and his network have plotted actions against France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany and Russia, he warned.
He said the network has operations in the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya and the lawless Pankisi Gorge in neighbouring Georgia. Many observers said that statement was an attempt to bring Russia onside with expected U.S. military action in Iraq by suggesting the White House is closer to seeing the three-year-old Russian war in Chechnya as an antiterrorism conflict.
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But many are suspicious of the sudden emergence of Mr. Zarqawi -- his real name is Ahmad Fadheel Nazal al-Khalayleh -- as a global threat, seemingly second only to Mr. bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, himself.
If Mr. Zarqawi is so important, it is curious that he does not appear on the FBI's list of the 22 most-wanted terrorists, terrorism expert Peter Bergen recently wrote in Britain's Guardian newspaper. Even after Mr. Powell spoke yesterday afternoon, Mr. Zarqawi had not been added to the agency's Internet list.
Mr. Bergen wrote that sources in the U.S. intelligence community say Mr. Zarqawi is not a significant al-Qaeda player.
The New York Times, meanwhile, quoted unnamed administration officials as saying many in the FBI and the Central Intelligence Agency are unhappy at the way Mr. Zarqawi's ties to Baghdad are being played up to bolster the case for war.
"All they know is that he was in the hospital there," one said.
Mr. Zarqawi's network is based in Kurdish-controlled northeastern Iraq with the tacit approval of the Iraqi President, Mr. Powell said. Mr. Zarqawi, the allegation goes, fled there after U.S.-led forces drove the Taliban government from power in Afghanistan.
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