BAGHDAD -- Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has sent a letter to a U.S. citizen personally offering condolences for the first time over the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Saddam said however he would not offer condolences to President Bush until he did the same over the deaths of 1.5 million Iraqis that Baghdad blames on 11-year-old U.N. sanctions against Iraq. Baghdad says Washington is behind the continuation of the sanctions.
"We are belonging to God and to Him we are returning and may God protect your life as we Muslims say to anyone who loses somebody dear to him," Saddam wrote to American Christopher Love in a traditional Iraqi message of condolence.
Love had sent an e-mail to Saddam calling on him to speak to Bush and resolve differences. No details on Love were immediately available.
A copy of Saddam's letter was made available to the media by Iraqi officials on Saturday. It was his first known personal message of condolence over the September 11 attacks in which some 5,400 people were killed.
Iraq has not publicly condemned the attacks but says it has sent condolences to Americans sympathetic to Baghdad.
In his e-mail to Saddam, Love said: "Mr President, please for the sake of humanity, please contact George W. Bush. Tell him why you are angry. I hope for all of our sakes he will listen with compassion and understanding, as I believe he will."
"How much it would mean to this world right now if you were to put aside your differences and side with the world, not just the U.S."
Saddam said in his reply: "I do not think your administration deserves that Iraqis condole with it on what happened, unless it condoles with the Iraqi people on the death of one and half million Iraqis who it killed."
He said he did not know who was behind the September 11 attacks and accused the United States of failing to produce enough evidence to back its case that Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden was the prime suspect.
In his letter, Saddam also said U.S. warplanes, enforcing no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq, had killed several Iraqis.