'No proof of Powell claim on al-Qa'ida link'

Ansar Al-Islam, the militant Islamic group that America claims links the Iraqi regime and al-Qa'ida terrorists, is little more than "a minor irritant in local Kurdish politics", an influential think-tank says.

In a statement called "Radical Islam in Iraqi Kurdistan: the mouse that roared", the independent, non-profit-making International Crisis Group (ICG) said there was no evidence to back the claim made last week by the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, that Ansar al-Islam was linked to Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'ida. "This has catapulted the small extremist group to a significance that does not appear warranted by the known facts," the ICG said.

Ansar al-Islam persevered with its local campaign for an Islamic Kurdish state at the weekend, shooting dead General Shawkat Haji Mushir, a leader of the ruling secular Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and five others, including a child.

General Mushir was a founding member of the PUK and had served as the chief intermediary with the Ansar militants. He was due to meet an Ansar defector when the attack occurred.

The PUK has lost a number of people to Ansar fighters, and, the ICG says, has been indulging in the propaganda coup offered up by Washington to play up the threat Ansar poses and defeat its rival through external intervention.

In his address to the UN Security Council on Wednesday, General Powell accused Baghdad of having an agent in the most senior levels of Ansar al-Islam who offered al-Qa'ida members a safe haven in northern Iraq. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the suspected assassin of an American diplomat in Jordan, had taken refuge there, he said, as well as al-Qa'ida fugitives from the US-led war in Afghanistan.

The think-tank conceded that links between Ansar and al-Qa'ida were possible but said the PUK had denied any "collusion between Ansar and Baghdad". The group was surviving through the support of groups in Iran, it said, although any alliance between the Sunni Ansar al-Islam and Shia Iran "could only be temporary and tactical".

A further claim by General Powell that the Ansar camp was a terrorist poison and explosives training centre was investigated at the weekend. Journalists brought to the site depicted in General Powell's satellite photo found a half-built breezeblock compound filled with armed Kurdish men, video equipment and children – but no obvious sign of chemical weapons manufacturing.

Ansar says the camp serves as its administrative office for Sargat village, living quarters and a propaganda video studio.