BERLIN (AFP) - German intelligence officials informed the United States at least 15 times on developments in Iraq following requests by Washington, a news report said amid controversy over Germany's role in the conflict to which it was officially opposed.

"On 33 occasions, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) asked the BND (Germany's foreign intelligence agency) questions, requesting help," said the news magazine Der Spiegel in its Monday edition.

The BND replied to about half of these requests and asked its two agents in Iraq to dig up the information, the magazine said.

But the agency would not comply in the rest of cases as the requested information was liable to directly help the U.S. military campaign, to which the government of former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was officially opposed.

Der Spiegel said that of the 130 notes the two German agents sent to BND headquarters at the time, 25 were passed on to Washington. At least one of the documents had a military content as it concerned troop movements.

The two German agents were based in Baghdad between February 14 and May 2003. U.S.-led troops invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003.

In a parliamentary debate last week, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier strongly denied that the two BND agents had helped U.S. forces choose targets for bombing.

Steinmeier, who was in charge of the secret service under Schroeder, dismissed as "scandal-mongering" reports that Berlin shared military secrets with Washington during the war.

One piece of information allegedly supplied by the agents led to a U.S. attack on a restaurant where the then Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was believed to have been dining.

Fourteen civilians were killed in the bombing, but Saddam was not there.

The agents themselves told a closed-door session of a parliamentary supervisory commission that they had no role in selecting targets for bombing and had no direct contact with U.S. officials.