WASHINGTON, March 26: The United States said on Sunday it finds reports Russia gave Saddam Hussein intelligence after the 2003 invasion of Iraq war “very worrying” and will seek explanations from Moscow. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley vowed to pursue the matter, as anger welled here against the Russians for possibly putting US troops at risk.

Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy said the reports, if true, would warrant a review of ties with Moscow and a second look at US attendance at a Group of Eight industrialized nations summit this July in St. Petersburg.

Rice said the US administration needed time to digest a Pentagon report released Friday that charged Russia had given Saddam information on US troop movements after the invasion that led to his ouster three years ago.

“Any implication that there were those from a foreign government who may have been passing information to the Iraqis prior to the invasion would be, of course, very worrying,” she told CNN during a round of Sunday talk shows.

Earlier she had told NBC television’s “Meet the Press” programme: “We would take very seriously any suggestion that this may have been done, maybe to the detriment of American forces.”

“Definitely we will raise it with the Russian government,” the chief US diplomat said. “I would hope the Russian government would take it seriously.”

Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service has denied the report, which said the Russians collected information from sources in the US Central Command in Doha, Qatar, and then delivered it to Saddam.

Rice told Fox News television that she had no reason to doubt or confirm the allegations but added: “I would not jump to the conclusion that, if in-deed the reports are true, that it had to be Moscow-directed.”

The secretary, who was President George W. Bush’s national security adviser when the Iraq war was launched, said she had been unaware of any Russian intelligence-sharing with the Iraqis.—AFP