A Frosty Friendship.(Russia and the U.S. at odds over Iraq)

Vladislav Achalov has only good things to say about Saddam Hussein. He is a "strong man," he says, "fighting for his country." A former deputy Defense minister in the U.S.S.R., Achalov met Saddam "several times" during his frequent visits to Baghdad, most recently last April at the Iraqi dictator's lavish birthday celebrations in Tikrit. Russian journalists have seized on the relationship to ask whether Achalov and other retired Russian generals provided military advice to Baghdad in the war. Achalov denies it--but admits that the Russian brass often went to Iraq. "We didn't spend all that time talking about women," he adds with a grin.

Moscow and Washington insist they're eager to bury the hatchet and revitalize the "strategic partnership" forged after September 11. But the job seems to be getting more difficult by the day. Shortly after the beginning of the war, the United States publicized Russian arms sales to the Iraqis--from GPS jammers designed to interfere with American precision-guided munitions to the Kornet missiles that destroyed several Coalition tanks on the battlefield. Next came revelations that Achalov and other Russian military veterans were hobnobbing with Iraqi war planners. Then U.S. forces apparently shot up a convoy of Russian diplomats leaving Baghdad, under mysterious circumstances.

Last week journalists searching through the rubble in Baghdad government offices produced a new crop of ticklish allegations. London's Sunday Telegraph newspaper obtained documents taken from the headquarters of the Iraqi secret police, the Mukhabarat, that seemed to indicate the Russian spy service, the SVR, had been sharing intelligence with its Iraqi counterparts--including a transcript of a closed-door war meeting between Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi, as well as a list of assassins for hire in the West recommended by the Russians. Searching another building, reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle found official-looking certificates from a "Special Training Center" in Moscow attended by Iraqi agents for training in eavesdropping and surveillance, as recently as late last year.

So far, the reaction from both London and Washington has been muted. A spokesman at the British Embassy in Moscow downplayed the significance of the documents: "Our priority at the moment ...