For Bakhtiar Amin the chance yesterday to visit the former headquarters of East Germany's Stasi secret police had personal significance beyond his duties as human rights minister in Iraq's interim government.

As he examined thousands of file cards in the archives of the ugly east Berlin ex-Stasi compound, he recalled a previous visit to Berlin, in 1980, when an assassination attempt against him and other Iraqi dissidents was foiled only at the last minute. Iraqi diplomats loyal to the former dictator Saddam Hussein, based in communist East Berlin, crossed into West Berlin carrying explosives, to blow up a conference involving 750 German and Kurdish students.