Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Russia gave intelligence reports to the Bush administration suggesting that the government of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was preparing terrorist attacks in the US or against US targets overseas.
But officials at the US State Department expressed surprise, saying they knew of no such information from Russia, Reuters reported.
Putin said Russia's intelligence services received and passed along the information after the Sept. 11 attacks and before the US-led invasion of Iraq in March last year. He gave no details of the nature of the intelligence or the type of attacks reportedly being prepared.
Putin said Russian "special services" had received information about plans for terrorist attacks "more than once." He said that US President George W. Bush had "personally thanked the chief of one of the Russian special services for that information, which he considered very important."
Putin added, however, that Russia had no information that anyone in Iraq carried out the plans for attacks. And he emphasized that the intelligence did not change Russia's opposition to Bush's decision to go to war, in part because of administration assertions of Iraq's support for terrorism. Putin said the criteria for resorting to military force were clearly defined and "were not observed" in the US-led war to overthrow Saddam.
"It is one thing to have information that Saddam's regime is preparing terrorist attacks, but we did not have information that it was involved in any terrorist acts," Putin said in remarks from Kazakhstan that were carried by official news agencies and broadcast on state television.
State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters he did not know anything about the information that Putin said Russia passed on. No such information was communicated from Russia through the State Department, he said.
"Everybody's scratching their heads," another State Department official said.
Putin, who has cultivated a warm relationship with Bush des-pite differences over the war, made his remarks a day after the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks reported in Washington that there was no clear evidence that Iraq had a relationship with al-Qaeda. That called into question a central rationale to the war, although Bush disputed the finding.
Putin's remarks could be interpreted as lending credence to the Bush administration's concerns over Iraq and whether it supported terrorism in the months before the war, but it was impossible to say how credible the Russian intelligence reports were.
A Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, declined to elaborate on Putin's remarks, but said that intelligence reports alone could not justify the use of force against another country.
"If we all start wars based on intelligence," Peskov said, "then it will be the end of the world."
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
ECONOMIC COERCION: Such actions are often inconsistently applied, sometimes resumed, and sometimes just halted, the Presidential Office spokeswoman said The government backs healthy and orderly cross-strait exchanges, but such arrangements should not be made with political conditions attached and never be used as leverage for political maneuvering or partisan agendas, Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said yesterday. Kuo made the remarks after China earlier in the day announced 10 new “incentive measures” for Taiwan, following a landmark meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) in Beijing on Friday. The measures, unveiled by China’s Xinhua news agency, include plans to resume individual travel by residents of Shanghai and China’s Fujian
RSS