Osama told Zarqawi to plan attacks in the US

WASHINGTON: Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden told the group's Iraq head Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi to plan attacks inside the United States before Zarqawi was killed in a US air strike last year, a senior US official said.

Frances Townsend, President George W. Bush's homeland security advisor, made the revelation on Tuesday to defend Washington's argument that it is fighting in Iraq to prevent the country from becoming a new 'sanctuary' for Al-Qaeda.

The bin Laden-Zarqawi link was made in secret documents that were declassified amid pressure from Democratic lawmakers for US troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq.

"The intelligence community tells us that in January 2005 Bin Laden tasked Zarqawi, who has been in Iraq, to form a cell to conduct attacks outside Iraq, and then frankly America should be his number one priority," she said.

"We know from the intelligence community that Zarqawi welcomed the tasking and claimed he had already had some good proposals," Townsend said.

Later that spring, bin Laden ordered Al-Qaeda's operations chief, Hamza Rabia, to go to Iraq to brief Zaraqawi about his plans for terror strikes, including in the United States, she said.

At that time, a top Al-Qaeda member also suggested to Bin Laden that he send Rabia to Iraq help Zarqawi plan external operations.

Rabia was killed in Pakistan in December 2005. Zarqawi was killed on June 7, 2006 in an US air raid on Baquba, north of Baghdad.