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The Associated Press has now picked up the story...which also means that it will be present in most all newsprint editions tomorrow.

Baghdad made last minute overture to U.S. as war approached, reports say

Wednesday, November 5, 2003

(11-05) 19:55 PST WASHINGTON (AP) --

Just days before U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq, officials claiming to speak for a frantic Iraqi regime made a last-ditch effort to avert the war, but U.S. officials rebuffed the overture, according to news reports.

An influential adviser to the Pentagon received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman indicating that Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal, ABC News and The New York Times reported Wednesday evening.

The chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service and other Iraqi officials had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction and offered to let American troops and experts do an independent search, the Times said. The Iraqi officials also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who was being held in Baghdad.

Messages from Baghdad, first relayed by the businessman in February to an analyst in the office of Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy and planning, were part of an attempt by Iraqi officers to persuade the Bush administration to open talks through a clandestine channel, people involved in the discussion told the Times.

The attempts were portrayed by Iraqi officials as having Saddam's endorsement, but it was not clear if American officials viewed them as legitimate.

In early March, Richard Perle, an adviser to top Pentagon officials, reportedly met in London with the Lebanese-American businessman, Imad Hage. According to both men, Hage laid out the Iraqis' position and pressed the Iraqi request for a direct meeting with Perle or other U.S. representatives.

Perle said the CIA authorized his meeting with the Iraqis, but he said CIA officials eventually told him they didn't want to pursue the channel.

The Times quoted internal Pentagon e-mails from Mike Maloof, the analyst in Feith's office, to an aide to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, outlining the Iraqi overtures. It was unclear, however, if top officials at the Pentagon pursued the matter. Maloof, who lost his security clearance over another issue, is on paid administrative leave from the Pentagon.

Hage previously lived in suburban Washington, where he started an insurance company. He moved to Lebanon in the 1990s and has been trying for 10 years to break into politics there but so far with little success.

He could not be reached immediately in Lebanon for comment.