/ 1 January 2002

Saddam’s Tripoli bolt-hole dismissed as ‘fiction’

Iraq's tightly controlled state press has found room for two outlets, albeit run by President Saddam Hussein's elder son, which provide Iraqis with news they don't get from other local media.

Iraq’s tightly controlled state press has found room for two outlets, albeit run by President Saddam Hussein’s elder son, which provide Iraqis with news they don’t get from other local media.

While other Iraqi newspapers glorify Saddam, Babel, a daily tabloid run by his influential son Uday, regularly publishes controversial and often hostile news about Iraq over several pages carrying dispatches by international news agencies.

Uday’s Youth TV, meanwhile, airs reports by other Arab satellite channels, chiefly Qatar’s Al-Jazeera, that give a different view to what Iraqis are normally told by their state-run television.

Babel on Sunday carried a report that touched on the sensitive issue of the fate of Saddam’s family should the United States attack Iraq and target the Iraqi strongman, as it has threatened to do.

In the section labeled ”If foreign news agencies are to be believed,” Babel reported that Libya on Saturday dismissed as ”fiction” a British newspaper report Saddam plans to pay Tripoli billions of dollars to provide political asylum for his family and senior members of the Baghdad regime in the event of a US-led war.

Babel on Sunday also carried a report about a conference of exiled Iraqi dissidents that had been due to be held in Brussels on November 22-25 to agree on a post-Saddam Iraq but has now been put off for at least two weeks amid reports of divisions within the fractious Iraqi opposition.

However, it chose to describe the dissidents as ”US-backed bickering renegades” and emphasised they were unable to agree on a new date for the meeting.

On Thursday and Saturday, Babel published a list of hundreds of names of the regime’s men — from Uday and brother Qussay down — apparently compiled by the Iraqi opposition, along with a warning that ”their day will come.”

The names, together with pictures of some of the senior officials, were published under the headline ”Honour List”.

Babel, which has become the most popular daily in Iraq, also refuses to censor news, again lifted from other media outlets, about Arab governments with whom Baghdad is eager to maintain good ties.

Thus ”Jordan’s Tyrant Wreaked Havoc” when Jordanian security forces recently cracked down on Islamists in the southern town of Maan, and political office in Egypt is barred to anyone except ”(President Hosni) Mubarak and his clique,” to take but two headlines in Saturday’s edition.

The headlines accompanied pieces in the ”Forum” section which, Babel is careful to underline, ”reproduces stories verbatim that do not necessarily reflect the paper’s own views.”

As part of his forays into the media world, Uday chairs the board of seven weekly newspapers and chairs the journalists union. He also heads a students union as well as the country’s Olympic committee and football association.

The tall, bearded 37-year-old weighed in the debate about the latest UN Security Council resolution on Iraq’s disarmament when he urged fellow members of parliament on Tuesday to accept the US-drafted document despite the sweeping arms terms it imposes on Baghdad, giving the surest signal that Saddam would accept the resolution, as was confirmed the next day.

A Western diplomat here concurred with recent Arab news reports that Uday’s younger brother Qussay, who oversees the elite Republican Guard, was steadily gaining more power.

Uday, who was seriously wounded in an assassination bid in December 1996, set up and heads a paramilitary force of volunteers known as Saddam’s Fedayeen. – Sapa-AFP