WASHINGTON, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Saddam Hussein's foreign minister Naji Sabri sold intelligence on Iraq's alleged secret weapon programs to CIA for 100,000 U.S. dollars before the Iraq war started out in 2003, U.S. TV network NBC said late Monday.

    The secret transaction was conducted in a French-sponsored meeting at a New York hotel room in September 2001, the report quoting U.S. intelligence sources as saying.

    Sabri was fully aware who he was dealing with at that time, it said.

    At the meeting, the then Iraqi top diplomat told the CIA's middleman that Saddam possessed chemical weapons and wanted a nuclear bomb, but needed much more time to build one than the CIA estimate of several months to a year.

    The information provided by Sabri was thought to be more accurate than the CIA's own assessment on Saddam's arsenal.

    However, Saddam's alleged nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs were proved to be nonexistent after the war.

    Sabri later broke off the secret contacts with U.S. intelligence agents after refusing to accept the CIA's proposal that he should defect to the United States and publicly renounce Saddam.

    After the U.S. troops toppled the Saddam regime, Sabri was neither arrested nor included in the notorious "deck of cards" of the U.S. military's most wanted Iraqi suspects.

    He now lives in Qatar teaching journalism and refuses to make any comments on the report.

    A former English literature professor, Sabri was appointed to the post as Iraq's foreign minister in 2001. Enditem