MOSCOW, April 15: Washington knew for some time about intelligence sharing between Moscow and Baghdad but is uncertain about how much damage to US interests such cooperation caused, a senior US official was quoted as saying Tuesday.

“We knew that there were contacts between the intelligence services of Iraq and Russia. But it is premature to make any assessment. We need more time,” the US ambassador to Moscow, Alexander Vershbow, told the Vremya Novostei daily.

Russia’s intelligence agency has already rejected a British newspaper report that Moscow had provided Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime with wide-ranging assistance in the run-up to the war on his country.

Britain’s Sunday Telegraph paper said Moscow had provided Baghdad with “lists of assassins available for ‘hits’ in the West”, citing what it said were secret files found in Baghdad on Saturday.

Moscow also gave Baghdad details of arms deals with neighbouring countries and intelligence on private conversations between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other Western leaders, the right-leaning weekly said.

The files, in Arabic, were mostly intelligence reports from anonymous agents and the Iraqi embassy in Moscow, it added.

The Iraqi embassy in Moscow has refused to comment on the report.

In Tuesday’s interview, Vershbow said the United Sates still believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, even though none has yet been found by US troops.

He added that some of those weapons may have been hidden in neighbouring Syria, but that Washington had no immediate plans to attack Damascus.

“We do exclude the possibility that some of the chemical weapons were transferred by Iraq to Syria even before the start of the war,” Vershbow said in comments that were carried in Russian.

“We are not satisfied with Syria’s position ... but we are not threatening Syria at this time.”—AFP