WASHINGTON, March 4: The Bush administration has failed to prove former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's links with Al Qaeda, one of President Bush's central arguments for a pre- emptive war on Iraq , says a report released by the Knight Ridder media group.

Claims of Saddam's links with Al Qaeda "appear to have been based on even less solid intelligence than (a similar) claim that Iraq had hidden stocks of chemical and biological weapons", the report said.

Nearly a year after the US and British troops invaded Iraq, no evidence has turned up to verify allegations of Saddam's links with Al Qaeda, and several key parts of the Bush administration's case have either proved false or seem increasingly doubtful, the report said.

It quoted US officials as saying there never was any evidence that Saddam's secular police state and Osama bin Laden's network were in league. The study says that a secret report updated in Jan 2003, on the eve of the war, also had rejected any link between Saddam and Al Qaeda.