The Pentagon's No. 2 official has retreated from his assertion that key lieutenants of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden are plotting with Saddam Hussein loyalists to kill Americans in Iraq.

In a television interview on Thursday's anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said ``a great many'' bin Laden operatives were working to link up with remnants of Saddam's regime to attack Americans.

``We know it (Iraq) had a great deal to do with terrorism in general and with al-Qaida in particular, and we know a great many of bin Laden's key lieutenants are now trying to organize in cooperation with old loyalists from the Saddam regime to attack in Iraq,'' he said Thursday on ABC's ``Good Morning America.''

But Wolfowitz _ an architect of US policy in Iraq _ said Friday in an interview with The Associated Press that he had misspoken.

He said US military forces were still trying to identify foreign fighters flowing into Iraq and whether they are collaborating with Saddam loyalists resisting the US-led occupation forces.

On the subject of bin Laden deputies, Wolfowitz said he was referring to only one man _ bin Laden supporter Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, one of the few names that Bush administration officials previously have cited to assert links between al-Qaida and Iraq before the war.

Al-Zarqawi allegedly helped train Iraqis in the use of poisonous chemicals and once received medical care in Baghdad, US officials have said.

``Zarqawi is actually the guy I was referring to _ should have been more precise,'' Wolfowitz said Friday. ``It's not a great many _ it's one of bin Laden's key associates _ probably better referred to that way than a key lieutenant.''

``On the specific issue of cooperation (between al-Qaida and insurgents), I have to emphasize this is a very hard target to penetrate,'' Wolfowitz said. ``Our highest priority in Iraq is to get better intelligence on these people.''

``There are some indications that they work together and they certainly work at common purpose,'' he said, declining to say what the indications are.

Wolfowitz's original claim suggested a dangerous new development for the US-led forces trying to stabilize the country.

Wolfowitz made his assertion Thursday after an ABC interviewer asked why the administration had put resources into the campaign in Iraq, which the interviewer said had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks, while bin Laden was still at large.

``I appreciate the chance to say it a little more carefully because this was sort of unanticipated,'' Wolfowitz told the AP in retracting his statements. ``I went ... to talk about Sept. 11.''

In a Sept. 6 interview, Wolfowitz told The Washington Post that hundreds of fighters from al-Qaida and other groups were now in Iraq.

``There are some thousands of former Baathists (members of Saddam's Baath Party) and some hundreds of al-Qaida and other foreign terrorists who are ... killing Americans and Iraqis and UN officials and moderate Shiite leaders in order to destabilize Iraq,'' Wolfowitz said in that interview.

On Friday, he said he couldn't say how many of the hundreds of foreigners might be al-Qaida because US military forces were still trying to identify them.

The Bush administration has outlined only limited evidence of Iraqi-al-Qaida contacts before the war, and no conclusive evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida plotted joint terror operations.

Likewise, US officials have said they have a poor picture of who is arrayed against US forces in Iraq now, and how coordinated their activities are.

Even though weeks have passed, it remains unknown who carried out the three large terror bombings in Iraq since the war ended _ at the Jordanian Embassy, the UN headquarters and a mosque in Najaf.

Commanders on the ground in Iraq said they are still pressing efforts to determine whether there was a link between insurgents attacking coalition forces and any particular terrorist organization.

Wolfowitz argued long before the war against Iraq that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, which he would sooner or later share with al-Qaida or other terrorists bent on targeting America. No such weapons have been found.

Before Wolfowitz clarified his remarks Friday, two other senior administration officials had disputed his assertions, but only on condition of anonymity.

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