BERLIN, March 3 (Xinhuanet) -- The German foreign intelligence agency BND admitted here Friday that one of its agents worked alongside the U.S. military at its operations command center during the war, but it denied that its agents had passed on any information to the Americans.

    The admission came one day after the New York Times reported that from early 2003 through the American invasion of Iraq, a German intelligence officer stationed in the office of American commander Tommy R. Frank in Qatar and passed on to the United States information gathered in Baghdad by two German spies.

    The BND confirmed the report that the German officer made 25 reports to the Americans, answering 18 of 33 specific requests for information made by the United States during the first few months of the Iraq war.

    The agency said that the information relayed to the Americans always went through the BND headquarters in the southern German town of Pullach near Munich and had no relevant military value.

    It said the decision to station an intelligence officer in Qatar from early 2003 through the invasion on March 20, 2003 was approved by the Gerhard Schroeder government.

    The Times published a report on Monday that said two German intelligence agents in Baghdad obtained a copy of Saddam Hussein's plan to defend the Iraqi capital, and a German official passed the plan on to American commanders a month before the invasion in March 2003. The German government and the country's Federal Intelligence Agency have denied the allegations.

    The newspaper also said the U.S.-German intelligence-sharing arrangement was made and approved in late 2002 by officials including then German foreign minister Joschka Fischer and his successor Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who served as Schroeder's secret service coordinator. Enditem