``Our paths have been different but we have the same enemy and I wish him (bin Laden) the greatest success possible in his fight,'' the Venezuelan-born Illich Ramirez Sanchez was quoted as saying in an interview with the newspaper France Soir yesterday, conducted earlier this week in his Paris prison cell.

Bin Laden, a Saudi millionaire, has been indicted by a US federal court in the August 7 bombings of two US embassies in East Africa that killed 224 people.

Ramirez, 49, who has been on a hunger strike since last Tuesday, said he is certain he will never leave prison and will die there. He is serving a life term for the 1975 murders of two French investigators and a Lebanese.

He has been in solitary confinement since French agents snared him in Khartoum, Sudan, on August 15, 1994, then hauled him toParis in a sack. He is also under investigation for as many as four terrorist attacks in France. Commenting on the current situation in the Middle East, Ramirez said he considers Saddam Hussein to be the last of the Arabian knights. ``I would be happy to fight under his orders, as a mere foot soldier against the United States and Israel,'' Ramirez was quoted as saying.

He also said he held no grudges against Sudan for his arrest there, but added that was not always protected by the Sudanese.

As for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Ramirez said he opposes his policies, even though they are ``logical.''

``My greatest pride is to have contributed to placing the Palestinian cause on the highest level,'' Ramirez said.

Ramirez's lawyers told the Associated Press last week that they had co-signed his will, and that he is preparing mentally for death.

A prison medical exam found that he has lost more than 17 pounds and now weighs 181 pounds, the lawyers said. Over a week without food and water wastaking its toll, they said, on the man long portrayed as a fearless, swaggering terrorist linked to the 1975 seizure of OPEC ministers in Vienna, Austria, and the 1976 hijacking of an Air France jet to Uganda.