“As American soldiers massed on the Iraqi border in March and diplomats argued about war, an influential adviser to the Pentagon received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman: Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal.

Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct a search. The businessman said in an interview that the Iraqis also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 who was being held in Baghdad…” —New York Times

They also offered to help out in the Middle East peace process and offered the U.S. oil concessions. These clandestine 11th-hour approaches by Iraqi representatives including director of Iraqi intelligence (destined to be no. 16 on the U.S.’s Iraqi most wanted list), with the reported approval of Saddam Hussein and offering “unconditional terms”, prompted a London meeting between Richard Perle and the Lebanese-American intermediary, who conveyed desperate, “begging” Iraqi requests for a direct meeting with Perle or another American representative. In the face of U.S. intransigence about Saddam yielding power, they apparently offered to hold elections within two years.

…(T)he Iraqis appeared intimidated by the American military threat. “The Iraqis were finally taking it seriously,” he said, “and they wanted to talk, and they offered things they never would have offered if the build-up hadn’t occurred.”

Mr. Perle said he found it “puzzling” that the Iraqis would have used such complicated contacts to communicate “a quite astonishing proposal” to the administration.

But former American intelligence officers with extensive experience in the Middle East say many Arab leaders have traditionally placed a high value on secret communications, though such informal arrangements are sometimes considered suspect in Washington.

Perle says he relayed these messages through channels, asking whether he should in fact meet directly with Iraqi representatives, and was told that his superiors were not interested.