WASHINGTON, Sept 18: President George Bush has conceded for the first time that ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the Sept 11, 2001 terror attacks.

Mr Bush had earlier insisted that Saddam was somehow involved in the attacks. He repeated this claim even in his Sept 7 televised address to the nation.

But while talking to reporters at the White House on Wednesday evening, Mr Bush said: “We’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with Sept 11.”

Mr Bush, however, said he had no doubt that the deposed Iraqi president had links with Al Qaeda, the terrorist network linked to the attacks.

The first indication that the Bush administration was changing its position on this issue came on Tuesday when Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he had “not seen any indication that would lead me to believe” that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks.

The same evening Mr Bush’s National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice also said that there was no link between the attacks and Saddam Hussein.

In a television interview on Tuesday night, Ms Rice said one of the reasons Mr Bush went to war against Saddam was because he posed a threat in “a region from which the 9/11 threat emerged.”

Mr Bush’s admission followed reports in the US media that mounting American deaths and negative impact on the economy had turned many in the United States against the US engagement in Iraq.