WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 (UPI) -- The Bush administration believes that Iran is holding top-level al-Qaida members in violation of U.N. resolutions, a report says.
The Washington Post said Saturday that Osama bin Laden's son is among the al-Qaida members believed to have slipped over the border from Afghanistan to Iran.
In 2003, Iran offered to trade the al-Qaida prisoners for a group of Iranians hiding in Iraq, the Post reported. While some in the Bush administration favored such a trade, Bush rejected it on the advice of Vice President Dick Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the newspaper said.
Sources told the newspaper that some in the intelligence community worry that publicizing Iran's capture of al-Qaida members could cause the country to free them.
"There was real debate about all this," a counter-terrorism official told the Post. "If we go public, the Iranians could turn them loose."
White House officials say Iran doesn't appear to be following U.N. resolutions that compel members to share information on al-Qaida, the newspaper said.
"We are not convinced that the Iranians have been honest or open about the level or degree of al-Qaida presence in their midst," one Bush adviser told the Post.
