KHARTOUM, Sudan — The Bush administration has forged a close intelligence partnership with the Islamic regime that once welcomed Osama bin Laden here, even as Sudan comes under harsh U.S. and international criticism for human-rights violations.

The Sudanese government, an unlikely ally in the U.S. fight against terror, remains on the latest U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. At the same time, however, it has been providing access to terror suspects and sharing intelligence data with the United States.

Last month, the CIA sent an executive jet here to ferry the chief of Sudan's intelligence agency to Washington for secret meetings, U.S. government officials confirmed.

A decade ago bin Laden and his fledgling al-Qaida network were based in Khartoum. After they left for Afghanistan, the regime of Sudanese strongman Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir retained ties with other groups on the U.S. terrorism list.

Behind the scenes

As recently as September, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell accused Sudan of committing genocide in putting down an armed rebellion in the western province of Darfur. And the administration warned that the African country's conduct posed "an extraordinary threat to the national security" of the United States.

Behind the scenes, however, Sudan was emerging as a surprisingly valuable ally of the CIA.

The warming relationship has produced significant results, according to interviews with American and Sudanese intelligence and government officials. They disclosed, for example, that:

• Sudan's Mukhabarat, the equivalent of the CIA, has detained al-Qaida suspects for interrogation by U.S. agents.

• The Sudanese intelligence agency has seized and turned over to the FBI evidence recovered in raids on suspected terrorists' homes.

• It has expelled extremists, putting them in the hands of Arab intelligence agencies working closely with the CIA.

• It is credited with foiling terrorist attacks against American targets by, among other things, detaining foreign militants moving through Sudan on their way to join forces with Iraqi insurgents.

A senior State Department official acknowledged that the Mukhabarat could become a "top tier" partner of the CIA.

Mystery man

The paradox of a U.S.-Sudanese intelligence partnership is personified by the Mukhabarat chief, Maj. Gen. Salah Abdallah Gosh.

Members of Congress accused him and other senior Sudanese officials of directing military attacks against civilians in Darfur. During the 1990s, the Mukhabarat assigned Gosh to be its al-Qaida minder. In that role he had regular contacts with bin Laden, a former Mukhabarat official confirmed.

AP Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who seized power in a 1989 coup, faces internal opposition against cooperating with the United States.

Today, Gosh is keeping contact with the office of CIA Director Porter Goss and senior agency officials.

In exchange for the collaboration, which has been largely unpublicized, Khartoum wants to be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. It is also pressing Washington to lift long-standing economic sanctions.

The cooperation is politically delicate for both sides.

Bashir's government faces strong internal opposition — including critics within the regime itself — against cooperating with the United States.

Official acknowledgment of the relationship by Washington could also create a political backlash in the United States.

In Congress, allies of human-rights advocates share strong anti-Sudanese sentiment with supporters of conservative Christian groups that have been sympathetic to Christian and animist rebels in southern Sudan, where a peace deal has taken hold.

An October report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said Gosh and other Sudan officials had played "key roles in directing ... attacks against civilians" and noted that the administration was "concerned that going after these individuals could disrupt cooperation on counter-terrorism."

The administration denied it was retreating in any way.

A senior administration official called intelligence-sharing one of "the building blocks" of U.S.-Sudanese relations but said "it wouldn't matter unless there was progress in other areas," including human rights.

A former haven

Sudan became a haven for Islamic radicals after the 1989 military coup that brought Bashir to power. He promptly declared that any Muslim could enter the country without a passport.

Visitors to Khartoum during the period included members of the hard-line Abu Nidal faction that had broken with the Palestine Liberation Organization, Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Islamist guerrillas fighting governments in neighboring African states.

Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, lived in relative luxury in Khartoum during the early 1990s. The Mukhabarat expelled Carlos in 1994, seizing him for French authorities.

Bin Laden moved his business and operations base to Khartoum in 1991 due to increasing conflict with Saudi Arabia, which revoked his citizenship three years later. His construction company built roads around the Sudanese capital. Al-Qaida expanded ties and offered financial support to a variety of radical Islamic groups.

As a Mukhabarat officer, Gosh began serving as an intermediary between the intelligence agency and bin Laden's fledgling al-Qaida network.

Dealing bin Laden

By 1993, the Clinton administration listed Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism. The United States shut down its CIA station in Khartoum and, two months later in February 1996, withdrew its ambassador.

Sudanese officials said their government, alarmed by the frayed ties, tried repeatedly without success to regain favor by turning over bin Laden to either the Saudis or the United States.

Clinton administration officials have said they briefly mulled bringing bin Laden to the United States but decided there was no legal basis to arrest him at the time. He had not been linked directly to terrorist acts against American citizens.

A federal grand jury eventually issued a sealed indictment against bin Laden in 1997, but by then Sudan had pressed him to leave and he had moved his operation to the sanctuary of Afghanistan's Taliban government.

The Clinton administration accepted an invitation by Sudan to send a joint CIA-FBI counter-terrorism team to Khartoum in mid-2000, but otherwise the Bashir regime's overtures were rejected — even when it offered to turn over two suspects in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, according to Jack Cloonan, a former FBI agent involved in tracking bin Laden.

The newly installed Bush administration took steps early in 2001 to improve relations with Khartoum, Sudanese and American officials said. In July, Walter Kansteiner, then assistant secretary of state for African affairs, met secretly in Kenya with Sudan's foreign minister. Another clandestine meeting followed in London, attended by Maj. Gen. Yahia Hussein Babiker, then Sudan's deputy intelligence chief.

The meetings explored possible cooperation on terror issues. But there was little progress until the attacks of 9/11, which Sudan condemned.

Trade-off

In late-September, Kansteiner and the CIA's Africa division chief held discussions with Babiker at the American embassy in London. A deal was struck.

Days later, the Bush administration abstained on a vote at the United Nations. As a result, Sudan escaped international sanctions threatened for its alleged role in efforts to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 1995.

At roughly the same time, the Sudanese turned over to the United States a stack of intelligence files with the cream of the information collected on members of al-Qaida and other extremist groups during their years in Khartoum and thereafter.

The intelligence partnership had begun in earnest.

By November 2001, the CIA had an active station in Khartoum, according to multiple sources. Among other programs, the agency was running surveillance on suspected foreign extremists with the knowledge and assistance of the Mukhabarat. Material obtained by Sudan intelligence was turned over to American investigators by Babiker, according to former FBI agent Cloonan.

Al-Qaida interviews

Cloonan and several FBI colleagues arrived in Sudan that month to interrogate several long-time al-Qaida members residing in Khartoum. The interviews were conducted at safe houses arranged by Sudan intelligence. The Mukhabarat brought the suspects to the FBI.

Among those Cloonan questioned were Mohammed Bayazid, a Syrian American whose alleged ties to bin Laden dated to the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan after Moscow's 1979 invasion. Bayazid allegedly sought to obtain uranium for al-Qaida.

Another person interrogated was Mubarak Douri, an Iraqi who was regarded as part of bin Laden's business infrastructure.

Cloonan said Douri and a second Iraqi laughed when he pressed them about possible bin Laden ties to Saddam Hussein's regime.

"They said bin Laden hated Saddam," the retired FBI investigator recalled. Bin Laden considered Saddam "a Scotch-drinking, woman-chasing apostate," the former federal agent said.

The Mukhabarat also allowed the FBI to interview the manager at Al Shamal Bank, where bin Laden held multiple business accounts while living in Sudan, Cloonan said. Those account records were made available to U.S. investigators as well.

Robert Oakley, a retired diplomat who served as special assistant to former Sen. John Danforth, the Bush administration's special presidential envoy to Sudan at the time, said that intelligence cooperation had a positive influence on overall ties.

"Our relationship with their Foreign Ministry was fragile," he said. "The only established relationship we had was through the intelligence channel, because we had our people working directly with them."

Collaboration with Sudan has steadily deepened since then.

John Prendergast, who served at the National Security Council during Clinton's second term, said the Sudanese have provided information to American intelligence about extremist suspects. "They are valuable on these connections because they were deep in it," he said. "They know aliases, business background, banking information and other data."

Special deliveries

At the request of American agencies, the Mukhabarat has continued to detain suspected extremists, some of whom have been interrogated by the FBI and CIA.

A U.S. source familiar with Sudan's cooperation said, "They've not only told us who the bad guys were, they've gone out and gotten them for us. Hell, we can't get the French to do that."

Sudanese and American sources confirmed that the Bashir government has turned over terrorist suspects to other Arab security services, including agencies in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Libya, another country long at odds with the United States which has been cooperating on counter-terrorism.

One of those expelled to the Saudi kingdom for imprisonment was a Sudanese national named Abu Huzifa, a suspected al-Qaida operative who reportedly admitted taking part in a failed 2002 plot to shoot down an American military plane in Saudi Arabia with a surface-to-air missile.

Sudan also has initiated an internal crackdown on suspected extremists, and it is closely monitoring foreigners moving through the country.

In May 2003, security forces raided a suspected terrorist training camp in Sudan. They arrested more than a dozen people — mostly Saudis, who were expelled to the kingdom. Four months later, a Sudanese court convicted three men accused of training foreign radicals to conduct attacks in Iraq, Eritrea and Israel, a State Department report said.

In response to pressure from Washington, the Bashir government also cracked down on the Khartoum operations of Hamas, the Palestinian militant Islamist group behind scores of suicide bombings in Israel. The United States considers Hamas a terrorist organization, but in Sudan — and much of the Arab world — it is generally viewed as a legitimate resistance group.

In 1998, Hamas opened a major office in Khartoum and the government granted it land and farms to support what a government statement called the "Palestinian struggle." The Hamas office has since been shut down, the State Department says.

Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail acknowledged in an interview that the Mukhabarat already has served as the eyes and ears of the CIA in neighboring countries, including Somalia, a sanctuary for Islamic militants.

Targeting Saddam

In 2003, as the U.S. invasion of Iraq neared, Saddam Hussein sympathizers recruited local and foreign jihadists in Sudan to fight American troops, sending small numbers to Baghdad.

The Mukhabarat monitored and rolled up the pro-Saddam network. Those efforts also "led to the discovery of cells in other countries that were active and planning to target U.S. interests," Babiker said.

Sudan's extensive cooperation with the U.S. has been noted in the State Department's annual reports on terrorism. The latest report said Sudan's assistance had "produced significant progress in combating terrorist activity."

A senior U.S. government official familiar with terror threats in the region said Khartoum was not at present a state sponsor of terrorism.

"These are not all nice guys, but they have gone way past a passing grade on counter-terrorism cooperation and don't technically belong on the list," he said. "The reason they are still there is Darfur."

In March, the United States successfully pushed for a U.N. resolution imposing sanctions on Sudanese officials implicated in Darfur atrocities.

The Bashir government rejects charges of genocide in Darfur and denies that senior officials such as Gosh have ordered attacks on civilians, which it blames on rogue army elements and militias. In late March, Sudan announced that it had arrested and charged 15 members of its military and security forces with war crimes.

Continuing pressure

But critics are impatient for a stronger U.S. response on Darfur.

"We have not taken adequate measures given the enormity of the crimes because we don't want to directly confront Sudan (on Darfur) when it is cooperating on terrorism," said former NSC staffer Prendergast.

Last month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sent a letter to the Bashir government calling for steps to end the conflict in Darfur.

But the letter, reviewed by the Times, also congratulated Sudan for increased cooperation with an African Union mission to Darfur. It also said the administration hoped to establish a "fruitful relationship" with Sudan and looked forward to continued "close cooperation" on terrorism.