AP - Intelligence report: Jordanian radical seeded Baghdad with sleeper cells ready to attack U.S. forces

British intelligence received reports ahead of the Iraq war saying Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi seeded Baghdad with ''sleeper cells'' to attack U.S.-led forces, and that he may have received chemical and biological weapons from northern Iraq.

The information, released as part of a review of British intelligence, comes as the Iraqi government said Thursday that it sees signs of increasing coordination in the insurgency between al-Qaida-linked terrorist groups and the remains of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime.

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Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of pro-Taliban fighters possibly linked to al-Qaida fled the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan after Sept. 11 and made their way to northern Iraq, where they linked up with Ansar al-Islam, a local group that controlled a small enclave on the Iranian-Iraqi border, according to intelligence reports and analysts.

Al-Zarqawi is believed to have been part of that group and to have had a role in the running of Ansar al-Islam in northern Iraq during 2002.

U.S. and British aircraft pounded the Ansar base, which was within the Kurdish zone, for days at the start of the Iraq war before U.S. and allied Kurdish forces entered the area.

Before the war, U.S. officials said they had evidence that Ansar had tested chemical and biological weapons at the site. The new British intelligence report notes the same thing.

U.S. forces later searched the area for traces of poisons and toxins but there were no reports of any chemical or biological weapons found. It is not clear if the toxins and poisons were destroyed in the attack.

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''We have learned there is a kind of escalating coordination between remains of Saddam's regime and al-Qaida elements such as al-Zarqawi,'' [Prime Minister Iyad] Allawi said in an interview with the pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat.