Germany asks US for detail of secret Saddam plan

Reuters | March 3 2006

Germany has asked the United States for more information about an alleged secret plan by Saddam Hussein to defend Baghdad against the 2003 U.S. invasion, the government said on Friday.

Government spokesman Thomas Steg said Germany stood by its denial of a New York Times report this week which said its intelligence agents obtained the plan and passed it to the United States weeks before the invasion.

But he said the government had asked Washington for more details of the classified military study on which the Times report was based, and whether it included a sketch map for deploying Iraqi forces that was reproduced by the newspaper.

"We have renewed our request to the American side and expressed the wish: if you can, give us the information whether such a secret study exists, is there a study with sketches, where do you believe such a sketch came from?" Steg said.

Media reports that German agents were secretly helping the U.S. invasion, which was strongly opposed by the Berlin government and the German public, have fanned huge controversy and demands for a parliamentary inquiry.

The government says the agents mainly supplied information on civilian sites that the Americans should avoid bombing.

It has acknowledged they also provided descriptions of the Iraqi military and police presence in Baghdad, but has strongly denied this information was used to guide bombing raids.

Steg reiterated that the German government knew of no secret Saddam defense plan, as reported by the Times, and therefore could not have handed it to Washington. "You can't pass on something that you don't know."

He also expressed doubt whether the basic diagram printed by the newspaper could have served as a viable defense plan.

"I don't honestly know if a city of many millions of people like Baghdad could develop a defense concept on the basis of such a sketch. I have the greatest doubts," he told a regular government news briefing.

The New York Times report will be discussed at a meeting next Monday of the German parliamentary committee responsible for monitoring the security services.

The parliamentary opposition will then decide whether to force an inquiry into the role of German spies in the Iraq war.

If it goes ahead, it could further embarrass the security services and hamper attempts by conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel's four-month-old coalition government to improve relations with Washington and consign U.S.-German differences over Iraq to the past.

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