Saturday, March 25 2006 14:48 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: Russia provided former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein with intelligence from inside the US military command on the American battle strategy and troop movements during the opening days of the Iraq war in 2003, according to an official report.

The unclassified Pentagon report, released yesterday, did not assess the value of the information provided to the Iraqis by the Russians other than citing two captured Iraqi documents as saying that Russians had their American sources from "inside the American central Command" and the battlefied information was passed on to Hussein through Moscow's top envoy in Iraq.

However, a classified version of the Pentagon report titled 'Iraqi Perspective Project' has not been made public.

The US State department has declined to comment on the report and the Pentagon has directed all questions to the Central Command.

According to an Iraqi document, the information that the Russians had collected from their 'sources inside the American Central Command in Doha' was that the United States was convinced that occupying Iraqi cities was impossible and that as a result the US military would avoid urban combat.

The strategy was to 'isolate Iraq from its western borders,' the document said.

The Pentagon report also showed that Russia told Iraq that the US planned to concentrate on bombing in and around Baghdad, cutting off roads to Syria and Jordan and creating enough confusion to force residents to flee.