This is from a Washington Post article regarding the US's interviews with Tariq Aziz after his April 24th surrender this year.
Aziz's extensive interrogations -- eased by a U.S. decision to quietly remove his family from Iraq to safe exile in a country that American officials would not name -- paint Hussein on the eve of war as a distracted, distrustful despot who was confused, among other things, by his meetings with Russian and French intermediaries. Aziz said Hussein emerged from these diplomatic sessions -- some secret at the time -- convinced that he might yet avoid a war that would end his regime, despite ample evidence to the contrary.
Aziz has told interrogators that French and Russian intermediaries repeatedly assured Hussein during late 2002 and early this year that they would block a U.S.-led war through delays and vetoes at the U.N. Security Council. Later, according to Aziz, Hussein concluded after private talks with French and Russian contacts that the United States would probably wage a long air war first, as it had done in previous conflicts. By hunkering down and putting up a stiff defense, he might buy enough time to win a cease-fire brokered by Paris and Moscow.
Former Russian prime minister Yevgeny Primakov, long close to Hussein, made an announced visit to Baghdad in February and a secret trip just days before the war's opening on March 20
The French diplo backchannel communication has been less public - to continue with the article:
The extent and character of French contacts with Hussein before the war is even less clear. Several media outlets reported early this year that France had opened a private channel to Hussein, but the French Foreign Ministry denied these reports, insisting that its diplomats had made plain to Hussein that he should stand down.
Read the article - it's worth checking out.
BTW, all of this was in direct violation of U.N. resolution 1441...
UPDATE:
FOX News has more:
Aziz, the highest-ranking Iraqi Christian in Saddam's regime, was initially close-lipped, several Pentagon and U.S. officials said. But once his family was moved out of the country to safety, he is said to have begun talking at length.
"That made a night and day difference," one source said.
Compounding Aziz's information, U.S. intelligence agencies have been going over millions of documents — 9½ miles' worth if laid end to end — left behind by Saddam's government after its sudden collapse around April 10.
The stories were both first reported Monday in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.
Among the details provided by Aziz and the captured files:
— Saddam did not attack invading American and British forces because he had been assured that France and Russia would use the U.N. Security Council to stop the war.
— Ties were even stronger to two other nations: North Korea, which was in the process of selling Iraq a long-range No Dong missile, and Serbia, which provided Iraq with a sort of "lessons learned" template from its experience in dealing with the NATO-led air campaign over Kosovo.