WASHINGTON (AP) - A former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman asserted Sunday that the general who ran the war in Afghanistan said more than a year before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that his resources were being shifted in preparation for taking on Saddam Hussein.

Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., contends that just months into combat in Afghanistan, Gen. Tommy Franks also told him that fighting terrorism in Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere should take priority over invading Iraq.

Graham said Franks told him he thought the United States knew less about the situation in Iraq than did some European governments, and the Bush administration should ask them for advice.

The senator, who is retiring at year's end, said his conversation with the now-retired general came in February 2002, when Graham was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

That was the month that Secretary of State Colin Powell told a House committee that President Bush was considering ``the most serious set of options one might imagine'' to bring ``regime change'' in Iraq, including the possibility of doing it alone. At least one European leader, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, said a few days later that Bush had assured him ``he harbors no attack plans.''

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