U.S. Fears Iraq Is Cultivating Terrorist Ties

Officials in the U.S. intelligence community are increasingly concerned about evidence that Iraq is stepping up its involvement with international terrorism--reactivating relations with one infamous terrorist, for example, and encouraging attacks by a deadly faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Fearful that Baghdad’s activities could result in terrorist attacks inside the United States, the FBI is mounting a “spider web” defense to immobilize Iraqi agents and their operatives, government sources said.

The spider web strategy, used when there are too many people for agents to follow each one, involves watching locations where terrorists or operatives are thought most likely to go.

Immediately after the Aug. 2 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the FBI notified its field offices around the country to intensify contacts with Middle East business people based in the United States and other sources of information on Iraq.

Since then, the bureau has stepped up its surveillance--physical, electronic and by other means--of Iraqis in the United States, including 1,403 students. The surveillance is directed primarily at locations where contact is considered most likely to be made with terrorists, such as the Iraqi news agency, Iraq’s U.N. mission and its reduced embassy force, according to a source familiar with the effort.

“I don’t doubt that there will be something attempted--either by Iraqis or by others in the new climate Saddam (Hussein, the Iraqi president) has created,” said Augustus Richard Norton, senior research fellow at the International Peace Academy in New York. “I don’t think there’ll be anything new, (but) the risks will just be higher.”

In chilling confirmation of the potential danger, Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz declared Friday that Baghdad no longer feels bound by moral constraints where terrorism is concerned.

“We say acts of terrorism are proscribed . . . (but) the Arab people are threatened with genocide,” Aziz said in an interview with France’s conservative daily Le Figaro.

“If you use imperialist methods, if you threaten Iraq with your ships and planes, then I am free of any moral obligations regarding the French, American or British governments,” Aziz said. Warships of the three nations are enforcing the U.N. embargo against Iraq and occupied Kuwait.

Government sources said no information of any specific terrorist plot inside the United States has come to light, but they added that the Iraqis have the capability.

“They have the infrastructure, no doubt about it,” one U.S. counterterrorism official said. But until now, their activities in the United States have been directed at Iraqi dissidents and opponents of Hussein’s government.

Iraq has had a long and bloody history of involvement in terrorism. It was only a few years ago, at a time when the tide in its war with Iran was running against it, that Hussein’s regime pulled back from supporting terrorists in an effort to improve relations with the West.

Since the conclusion of the Iran-Iraq War, however, Hussein has set about re-establishing his terrorist links and positioning himself to use terrorism as a tool for intimidating neighbors and others, an Administration official with Mideast responsibilities said.

The United States removed Iraq from its list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1982, but an Administration official with long experience on Mideast matters said the Iraqis will be returned to the list, with the only question being one of choosing the right moment.

Concern over possible terrorist actions stems in part from Iraq’s approval earlier this year for Abu Nidal to re-establish a base of operations in Baghdad. His office was closed down by the Iraqis in 1983 under pressure from the United States and others in the West.

Abu Nidal, whose renegade faction broke from the PLO in the mid-1970s, has been linked with some of the world’s most notorious terrorist acts, including the simultaneous attacks in 1985 on the Rome and Vienna airports. Earlier, he was linked to the 1982 assassination attempt on the Israeli ambassador to Britain--an incident that triggered Israel’s invasion of Lebanon.

Abu Nidal’s nephew reopened a Baghdad office in April or May, after his uncle won approval for expanding his operation there.

Counterterrorist sources also cite as evidence of Iraq’s return to terrorism the support it gave to the foiled May 30 attack by sea on an Israeli beach. That assault was allegedly masterminded by Abu Abbas, the terrorist behind the Achille Lauro ship hijacking in 1985. Although the Libyans provided the direct support for the attack, analysts say the Iraqis actively encouraged Abbas.

Abbas heads the Palestine Liberation Front, the pro-Iraqi faction under the PLO umbrella that some regard as the most militant member of the group. It is considered very small but very deadly.

In the past, PLO chief Yasser Arafat has been able to bring Abbas into line, but no longer, according to several counterterrorism experts. With his Iraqi patronage, Abbas now has disproportionate clout over Arafat. But whatever happens to Hussein will, in turn, deeply affect Abbas.

Iraq also has supported the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which carried out an attack on a Syrian diplomat in Belgium earlier this year.

The FBI, in stepping up surveillance, is likely to focus attention on two states that lead the nation in hosting Iraqi students: Michigan with 143 students and California with 139. No action has been taken to interrupt their funds from home, according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

In addition to the students, 2,696 Iraqi nationals entered the United States from Jan. 1 to Aug. 8, according to INS records, which do not disclose how many of them have left or remain in the country. There are no figures available for the number of Iraqis in the United States as permanent residents or naturalized citizens.

Despite the heightened awareness of U.S. counterterrorist officials, some Mideast specialists say Hussein is not likely to dispatch any of his own agents on a terrorist mission here.

That leaves pro-Iraqi groups, such as those headed by Abbas and Abu Nidal, and free-lance terrorists--pro-Hussein Arabs sympathetic to Iraq’s situation but who act on their own.

A Pentagon analyst said he takes most seriously the threat of Hussein’s inciting groups outside Iraq to strike.

“Are there groups that he has control over--Baathist cells--that he might be able to activate?” the analyst pondered. “He might have some groups that have lain dormant for years. He hasn’t used them since the late 1970s, when he began a pragmatic thrust. But that doesn’t mean he has no old cells to activate.”

“Abu Nidal, having gone back to Baghdad, should be watched very carefully,” said Helena Cobban, a Middle East specialist and visiting peace fellow at George Mason Conflict Resolution Center. “I sense that the Iraqi regime has its hands so full right now that it might take them a while to put something together in the terrorism sponsorship department.”