Iraq Points Finger In Triple Blast

Moroccan Foreign Fighter Blamed For Deadly Attack Last Month

(CBS/AP)  Spanish authorities, however, believe Khayber was part of a network linked to Ansar al-Islam, an Islamic extremist group based in northern Iraq, which recruited foreign fighters to go to Iraq to battle the U.S.-led coalition.

The Iraqi statement said Khayber moved last year to Syria "where he helped organize terrorist cells for foreign terrorists" who were sent to neighboring Iraq. Arab media said Khayber was arrested in Syria in May 2004 and handed over to the Moroccans.

Efforts to reach Moroccan authorities to confirm the report were unsuccessful because business offices had closed for the breaking of the Ramadan fast.

However, a Moroccan analyst who attended high school with Khayber, Abdellah Rami, said he doubted Khayber was in custody because he still sends money to his two wives in the Moroccan city of Larache, where he was born in 1970. He also said Khayber was a vehement critic of Shiites, the main victims of the Balad attacks.

"Khayber used to support the killings of Shiites in Pakistan or the killing of Christians, even before Sept. 11," Rami said. "He became very animated in the discussions, very fanatic."

Syria has denied any support for Iraqi insurgent groups and insists that it is trying to control the porous border.

But in a meeting with reporters, Iraqi Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi warned Damascus government against interferring in Iraq and called on Arab governments to pressure Damascus to crack down on Iraqi opposition groups operating from Syrian soil.

Al-Dulaimi, a Sunni Arab like most of the insurgents, said that more than 400 foreign fighters, mostly Egyptians, have been arrested in Iraq but gave no timeframe.

He said foreign fighters are met at Damascus airport, trained for two to three weeks and are then sent across the border into Iraq.

"The silence of the Arab regimes regarding the Syrian role in Iraq is as if they approve," said al-Dulaimi told reporters. "I call on all the Arab regimes to pressure the Syrian brothers to put an end to the spilling of the Iraqi blood. I don't want to say more because this is a painful and sad issue to me."

Al-Dulaimi said he had told the Syrians repeatedly to stop "playing with your destiny and the destiny of Iraq. Iraq will not be turned into a new Lebanon." Syria controlled from 1976 until it withdrew its troops last April under international pressure following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Iraqi allegations of a Syrian role were made as Damascus faces mounting international pressure to cooperate in the U.N. investigation into the assassination of Hariri last February.

On Monday, the U.N. Security Council warned of possible "further action" if Syria does not cooperate with a U.N. investigation that has implicated top Syrian officials in the assassination.