World

Bremer Links Attack To Al Qaeda

February 16, 2004 / 6:23 AM EST / CBS/AP

America's top civilian in Iraq sees a strong possibility of foreign terrorist involvement in the bold daylight raid on a police station Fallujah, reports CBS News Correspondent Tom Foty.

"There were foreigners apparently involved. We're still looking into that to try to find out what the implications are," L. Paul Bremer said.

He said the attack Saturday by dozens of gunmen was "sophisticated" and appeared to be "well organized." Twenty-five people, most of them policemen, were killed. Dozens of prisoners were freed.

Bremer said in a broadcast interview it was still too early to know who planned and carried out the assault.

"But we've had a pattern of suicide bombing over the last three or four months that exactly fit the strategy that's been outlined by an al Qaeda terrorist here named Zarqawi."

In other developments:

Iraq will ask the United States to remove Saddam Hussein's status as a prisoner of war and hand him to Iraqis for trial, the nation's foreign minister said Sunday. Hoshyar Zebari said in Kuwait that the new Iraqi government will request that Saddam is "handed over to the Iraqi justice." Zebari was speaking at the end of a two-day meeting with delegates from Iraq's neighbors.

Iraqi police captured a former Baath Party chairman Saturday who was No. 41 on the U.S. military's most-wanted list, leaving only 10 fugitives from the list still at large. Mohammed Zimam Abdul-Razaq - the four of spades in the military's deck of cards listing the 55 most-wanted Iraqis - was arrested at one of his homes in western Baghdad.

Two U.S. convoys were attacked less than a mile apart in Baghdad on Sunday, and U.S. soldiers in one of the attacks opened fire, killing an Iraqi driving nearby and wounding six others, witnesses and hospital officials said.

The military said an 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper died when his vehicle overturned near Baghdad a day earlier. The soldier's name was not released.

The former top U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq called President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair "salesmen" Sunday for their handling of information in the lead-up to war. Hans Blix criticized the two leaders for attacking Iraq even though his U.N. inspection teams made no significant finds in their search for Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction — the main justification for the U.S.-led invasion. The weapons expert also sharply criticized Washington for using what he called inaccurate intelligence concerning an alleged deal between Iraq and Niger to bolster Baghdad's nuclear capability, calling it "scandalous."

Police said foreign fighters, either Arabs or Iranians, were involved in the attack on the police station and that two of four attackers killed in the battle had Lebanese identification papers. Rumors spread in the city that an Iraqi Shiite Muslim militia with links to Iran, the Badr Brigade, was responsible.

But a U.S. military officer in Baghdad said the attack's sophistication pointed to former members of Saddam Hussein's military.

"This was something put together by people with knowledge of small unit tactics," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It was a complex, well coordinated attack. This would not be the same tactics that al Qaeda would employ. These are military tactics."

The assault involved two simultaneous attacks: One group of gunmen overran the police station, freeing dozens of prisoners, while a second team pinned down Iraqi security forces at a nearby compound.

Bremer said Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian suspected of carrying out some of the most deadly bombings in Iraq, is "basically trying to set up a sectarian war here, a civil war, and those suicide bombings were certainly consistent with his strategy."

He said the United States had doubled the reward for the capture or death of al-Zarqawi.

"We are conducting a major campaign to catch him," Bremer said. "We believe he's still in Iraq."

Bremer said there was "no question" al-Zarqawi was the author of a captured document to al Qaeda leaders about the state of the insurgency in Iraq.

Bremer said that while the Bush administration remained committed to returning sovereignty to the Iraqi people by June 30, forces from the U.S.-led occupying coalition would remain in the country.

"Coalition forces will be needed here for some time, until the Iraqi security forces themselves are capable," he said.

He also said officials from the military and the international Red Cross were still working out the details of when the Red Cross would meet with Iraq's ousted leader, Saddam Hussein.

Saddam was captured on Dec. 13 and is being held at an undisclosed location.