WASHINGTON, Jan 26: White House chief of staff Andrew Card on Sunday linked Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to the Al Qaeda structure responsible for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States.

“Saddam Hussein has had a long history of relationships with terror organizations and those terrorist organizations include the Al Qaeda network,” Card told NBC’s “Meet the Press” programme.

“It’s time for that regime to come to an end,” he said, just two days before President George Bush is to make his annual “State of the Union” address.

The September 11 attacks left some 3,000 dead after 19 Al Qaeda members hijacked passenger planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center towers in New York, the Defence Department headquarters in Washington and a field in Pennsylvania.

Senator Christopher Dodd, a Democrat considering a run for the presidency in 2004, said he had yet to see conclusive evidence linking Saddam to Al Qaeda.

“I have yet to see that connection,” he said on the same programme, calling on the administration to lay out whatever details they had to the American public.—AFP