Saddam, bin Laden 'foes'

LOS ANGELES - Osama bin Laden intensely dislikes Saddam Hussein, according to a book of interviews with people who know him.

The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History, by CNN security expert Peter Bergen, says bin Laden's Pakistani biographer told him that the al Qaeda leader "condemned Saddam Hussein ... with such kind of abuses that it was difficult for me to write".

After the September 11 attacks on the United States, the Bush Administration made much of what it said were links between Saddam and bin Laden's organisation, citing this as one justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Bush said in a speech in October 2002: "We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and gases."

Bin Laden's Pakistani biographer, Hamid Mir, told Bergen that the al Qaeda leader has vowed never to be taken alive and once gave his guard a pistol with two bullets to shoot him if it appeared that he might be caught.

The guard told Bergen that "Sheikh Osama gave me a pistol and made me his personal bodyguard. The pistol had two bullets, for me to kill Osama if he was about to fall into enemy hands."

Bergen, who met bin Laden in 1997, interviewed more than 50 people over eight years to produce the book, which will be published next month.

Excerpts feature in the latest Vanity Fair.

- REUTERS