Saddam Hussein’s senior weapons adviser has surrendered to US military authorities, insisting that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and that the US-led invasion was unjustified.
Lieutenant General Amir al-Saadi was Saddam’s science adviser, and the leading Iraqi wanted for questioning about the country’s chemical weapons programme. He oversaw Iraq’s chemical programme, and is believed to have in-depth knowledge of other weapons programmes.
Lt-Gen al-Saadi arranged his surrender with the help of Germany’s ZDF television network. The network said it was asked to film him leaving his Baghdad villa with his German wife, Helga, and presenting himself to a US warrant officer, who escorted him away.
A representative for US central command in Qatar told Reuters that Lt-Gen al-Saadi was in custody after surrendering, but said no other details were available.
In an interview with ZDF, the science adviser insisted that he had been honest in his dealings with weapons inspectors before the war, saying: ”I was knowledgeable about these programmes. I was telling the truth, always telling the truth. I never told anything but the truth, and time will bear me out.
”You will see. There will be no difference after this war. I am saying this for posterity and for history and not to defend a regime … I am saying exactly what I believe in, I knew. Nobody told me what to say. Never.”
The elegant, British-educated Lt-Gen al-Saadi is believed to be the first of 55 regime figures sought by the coalition to be taken into custody.
He told ZDF that he did not know what had happened to Saddam and repeated his assertion that Iraq was free of weapons of mass destruction.
According to ZDF’s correspondent in Baghdad, Ulrich Tilgner, Lt-Gen al-Saadi said that he had spent the war at his home, and had decided to turn himself in after seeing on the BBC that he was being sought.
”He is crucial to our understanding of what has been going on with their WMD (weapons of mass destruction) programme for years,” a US intelligence official told Reuters.
”He knows where stuff is hidden, and he also knows the names of the major scientists associated with the programme, what their roles were … and how far along Iraq was in certain areas,” the official said.
”Frankly, his significance cannot be overstated in terms of the information he has over a long period of time dating back to well before the [1991] Gulf war.”
Garner: Looting will die down
The man who will head a US-led civil administration of Iraq, retired Lieutenant General Jay Garner, has said that the widespread problem of looting in the country ”will die down”.
Speaking to Sky television, Garner said: ”This will come under control. You have to quit the war before you can handle that [looting]. It will subside.”
Chaos has reigned in Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk, but Garner denied that troops were turning a blind eye to the problem, saying: ”No, absolutely not.”
His words came hours after the announcement that the US military and Iraqi police officials have agreed to joint patrols to restore order in Baghdad following days of lawlessness and looting.
The agreement followed a day of meetings between US marines and Iraqi police officials.
Grenade launchers seized in Basra
British forces in Basra have seized 250 rocket-propelled grenade launchers and other weapons believed to have been stored for use by suicide bombers, the Associated Press has reported.
Meanwhile, along the Iraq-Iran border, UK forces flooded the lawless region amid reports of chemical weapons caches and underground chambers where prisoners from the 1991 Gulf War were being held.
Soldiers seized 250 rocket-propelled grenade launchers in the northern part of Basra on Friday, Major Neil Robertshaw, of 10 Transport Regiment, Royal Logistic Corps, said.
Explosives and detonators were recovered at several locations after patrols in the area were tipped off, British officials said.
Soldiers were told to be on full alert amid fears bombers would strike in crowded areas. Tanks and armoured carriers were escorting troops delivering water in the city centre.
In Baghdad, marines uncovered a cache of 310 suicide-bomb vests, at least 160 of them packed with explosives and ball bearings, in an elementary school, US central command reported.
US marine killed at checkpoint
A US marine was shot and killed at a Baghdad checkpoint Saturday by a man carrying a Syrian identification card, US central command has said.
The marine was guarding a medical facility when two men, posing as landscape workers, approached him, officials said.
One man shot and killed the marine. Marines nearby shot and killed the Syrian man, while the second attacker fled the scene.
Jessica Lynch returns to US
Jessica Lynch, the US soldier rescued in a daring commando raid in Iraq, returned to America on Saturday to recover from her injuries at the army’s premier medical centre.
A C-17 military ambulance flew the 19-year-old from Germany to Andrews Air Force Base near the capital, along with her immediate family and around four dozen wounded soldiers.
Ms Lynch, who is from Palestine, West Virginia, will receive treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre, outside Washington.
In a written statement, her family said that she ”is in pain, but is in good spirits”.
She was captured on March 23 after her 507th Maintenance Company convoy was ambushed in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya, and rescued from an Iraqi hospital in the city by US commandos on April 1.
G7 to back UN resolution on rebuilding Iraq
Finance officials from the world’s seven richest industrial countries today agreed to support a new UN security council resolution as part of a global effort to rebuild Iraq.
The deal settles a dispute that had threatened to delay post-war help, which the US had insisted could go ahead without UN action.
But the G7 finance leaders, in a joint statement, endorsed a resolution as part of a reconstruction plan that will involve the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
”We recognise the need for a multilateral effort to help Iraq. We support a further UN security council resolution,” said the statement from the finance ministers and central bank presidents of the US, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada.
Looting continues in Baghdad
Iraqis gathered in central Baghdad today to call for an end to the looting and lawlessness that have broken out across the city since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Dhargham Adnan (25) a student at Baghdad university, told Reuters news agency that US troops did not appear to be doing anything to stop the looting of most public buildings in the capital.
As well as ransacking government buildings, hospitals and schools, looters have also raided the Iraqi national museum in Baghdad, taking or destroying many of the country’s archaeological treasures.
China has called on the US to help track down goods it said were stolen from its Baghdad embassy.
”China deeply regrets the anarchy caused by the war in Iraq, and strongly condemns the robbery,” the official Xinhua news agency quoted the Chinese foreign ministry representative, Liu Jianchao, as saying.
The report did not detail the items taken or say what they were worth. Saddam and son ‘alive’
A prominent opponent of Saddam Hussein says that the toppled Iraqi dictator is alive and may be north-east of Baghdad, according to an Italian newspaper report.
Also today, Baghdad residents said that they had seen Saddam’s son and heir apparent, Qusay, alive after an attack by US forces on Monday.
Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi, a longtime exile who has been tipped as a future leader of Iraq, told Turin’s La Stampa newspaper in a phone interview published today that Saddam had not been killed.
”Saddam Hussein is alive. His sons and he were seen separately. Saddam Hussein could be moving northeast of Baghdad,” Chalabi, speaking from the southern Iraqi town of Nassiriya, was quoted as saying.
”I don’t think he can escape. We will stop him,” he added.
Meanwhile, residents of the Baghdad suburb of Mansur said that they had seen Saddam’s younger son Qusay alive shortly after US bombs flattened a building in an attempt to kill the dictator and his sons last Monday (April 7).
Chirac: UN must reconstruct Iraq
The French president, Jacques Chirac, has told the prime minister, Tony Blair, that the UN should be charged with putting a new Iraqi government in place.
Chirac telephoned Blair following discussions with the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, and Vladimir Putin, the Russian president in St Petersburg.
”The political, administrative, economic and social reconstruction of Iraq can only be done by the United Nations, which has the legitimacy and experience necessary for the task,” Chirac said, according to an Elysee Palace representative.
”This is particularly true for the putting in place of an Iraqi government,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, has voiced fears of a civil war in Iraq involving Sunnis, Shi’tes and Kurds.
”My fear is that the Sunnis and Shi’ites will begin to attack each other,” Mubarak said in an Egyptian television broadcast.
Turkey will not send troops to northern Iraq
Turkey’s foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, said today that he saw no immediate need for Turkish troops to intervene in northern Iraq, apparently satisfied with US assurances that Kurdish forces would pull out of two key northern Iraqi cities.
Turkey wants the US to block Kurdish fighters from controlling the oil-rich northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk and the commercial hub of Mosul — moves Ankara fears could inspire Kurdish rebels across the border in Turkey.
But Gul said that Kurdish fighters had withdrawn from Kirkuk. ”For the time being, there is no need for the Turkish army to enter,” he said.
In comments published today in the Turkish Daily News, the minister said Turkey would not ”hesitate from taking the appropriate decisions” if ”pledges and assurances made to Turkey” were not kept.
US paratroopers have been dispatched to guard Kirkuk’s oil infrastructure and reassure Turkey. Washington also invited Turkey to send military observers to monitor the situation in the city.
Final showdown looms in Tikrit
Lead elements of the US 4th Infantry Division, described as the most modern in the US army, have moved into Iraq from Kuwait today, according to US officials.
Many analysts expect the 4th Infantry, with 30 000 troops, to race up the country to capture Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown and his loyalists’ last major stronghold.
Alternatively, other US units already in the country could be sent to Tikrit and the 4th Infantry Division could be used to replace them both in Baghdad and other areas where there are pockets of Iraqi resistance and civil unrest.
The 4th Infantry Division has approximately 175 Bradley fighting vehicles and 150 Abrams tanks equipped with top of the range electronic technology that will be tested in combat for the first time in Iraq. It also has an aviation brigade with Apache and Black Hawk helicopters and an artillery brigade.
Iraqi officer: there was no clear battle plan
A colonel in the Republican Guard today said that he and his troops had made no effort to fight the US-led forces in Iraq, explaining that his orders were simply to hide from incoming bombs.
Speaking to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, the unnamed officer said that soldiers had deserted his unit on a daily basis and that commanders, who had no clear battle plan, did not try and stop them.
”The plan was not good: if the plan was good, maybe they would have fought. The airport [at Baghdad] was not shut down — it was stupid,” he said. ”If you leave your home door open, the thieves will enter very easy.” – Guardian Unlimited Â