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Aziz saw saddam alive { April 28 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-main28.htmlhttp://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-main28.html
Aziz: I saw Saddam alive
April 28, 2003
BY JOHN DIAMOND AND VIVIENNE WALT Advertisement
BAGHDAD, Iraq--Iraq's former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz has told U.S. interrogators he saw Saddam Hussein alive after the two airstrikes mounted by coalition forces to kill him, a senior defense official says.
The information provided by the most recognizable regime figure taken into custody so far bolsters sketchy reports flowing into U.S. intelligence that Saddam and his two sons survived the March 19 and April 7 airstrikes targeting them during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Almost three weeks after the fall of Baghdad, the Bush administration's public stance is nonchalant: Saddam will turn up, either alive, in some Iraqi version of the Alamo, or dead under a pile of rubble.
The important thing, administration officials say, is that Saddam no longer runs Iraq. Privately, however, administration officials know their stance is, at best, a brave face on an uncertain situation.
Until Saddam is found, his friends and his foes in Iraq will continue to operate out of fear that he could make a comeback and settle scores with anyone who helped the coalition. Captured regime officials may withhold what they know about any weapons of mass destruction as long as they are uncertain of Saddam's fate.
Partly for those reasons, U.S. officials don't know whether they can trust Aziz, who surrendered to coalition forces last week. General Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said Sunday in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, that Aziz was being ''cooperative and talkative'' under interrogation. ''What we don't know is the veracity of it. It will take time. But he is cooperating right now,'' he said.
The senior defense official who said Aziz claimed to have seen Saddam also said interrogators have concluded Aziz is lying about some other matters that have come up in questioning. Some of the other 13 senior regime officials being questioned at an undisclosed location in the Gulf region may be holding back their best information in hopes of bartering for lenient treatment, said the senior defense official, who receives detailed daily reports on the progress of the questioning.
The Bush administration is not inclined to offer leniency. Indeed, after initially seeking only 55 of the regime's top officials, U.S. and allied forces are now hunting for 259 members of Saddam's military and civilian leadership, the senior defense official said.
Iraqi opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi said Sunday in a TV interview that he believes Saddam and his two sons, Udai and Qusai, are alive and on the run and hiding in separate places.
''We have a pretty good idea of how they are moving and where they were, and we've tried to again focus on how we can know where they will be, so that they will be apprehended,'' Chalabi said.
''Of course Saddam is alive,'' a colonel from Iraq's military intelligence says. ''It's unquestionable that he didn't prepare for this moment, because he prepared for every tiny detail. He might be in a simple house or even be driving a taxi,'' said the man, speaking in west Baghdad's Mansour neighborhood. He agreed to talk on condition that he remain anonymous.
Chemical weapons?
American troops reported finding a metal drum Sunday that preliminary tests indicated could contain chemicals used to disable and kill.
The discovery came as the Iraqi chief liaison to United Nations weapons inspectors surrendered to U.S. forces.
Lt. Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin--No. 49 on the U.S. list of the 55 most-wanted figures from the regime of Saddam Hussein, the six of clubs in the deck of fugitive playing cards--was taken into custody in Baghdad.
Capt. Kellie Rourke, division battle captain with the 101st Airborne Division, said Amin surrendered to soldiers of the division's 2nd Brigade and was taken to the international airport for questioning.
He was among the key figures in Saddam's weapons programs. He would be expected to have detailed knowledge of any illegal armaments and where they might be found, if they exist.
Meanwhile, a dozen suspicious 55-gallon drums were found in an open field near the northern Iraqi town of Baiji. Tests indicated one drum might contain the nerve agent cyclosarin and a blister agent that could be mustard gas, U.S. troops said.
But more tests were being conducted. By design, initial test procedures favor positive readings, erring on the side of caution to protect soldiers.
The New York Times quoted Capt. Ryan Cutchin of Mobile Exploitation Team Bravo--one of the specialist teams deployed in Iraq--as saying further testing by his unit had shown that the barrel's contents were not chemical weapons. He also said that initial suspicions that two vehicles at the site were mobile chemical laboratories had proved wrong.
There was no immediate comment from U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar, about the report, posted on the Times Web site Sunday.
There have been many false reports that coalition forces have turned up chemical or biological weapons, and the U.S. Central Command was measured in its response to the discovery.
Prisoner was nemesis
During the UN inspectors' long, fruitless search for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, they had to deal with Amin, head of Iraq's monitoring commission for more than a decade.
Amin and his troops refused to allow UN inspectors into presidential palaces and other ''sensitive sites'' during the first round of UN inspections that ended in 1998. He was also one of the few Iraqis authorized to comment on weapons of mass destruction.
'Mayor' of Baghdad arrested
The U.S. military arrested a political pretender Sunday in Baghdad, while a Shiite Muslim group signaled a new willingness to cooperate on the eve of a pivotal U.S.-sponsored conference to help form a provisional Iraqi government.
The arrest of Mohammed Mohsen al-Zubaidi reflected U.S. determination to brook no interlopers in its effort to build a consensus for administering Iraq. Timed just before today's high-profile conference, it sent a clear message: Don't meddle.
Al-Zubaidi was a returned exile associated with the opposition Iraqi National Congress who declared himself mayor of Baghdad without sanction from U.S. authorities. U.S. Central Command accused him of ''subversion.''
His activities, including designation of ''committees'' to run city affairs, had complicated the efforts of postwar U.S. civil administrator Jay Garner to reorganize political life. A U.S. military spokesman said al-Zubaidi was arrested ''for exercising authority which was not his.''
Central Command accused al-Zubaidi and his associates of ''obstructing the normal means of governance for their own self-interests,'' particularly by claiming control over the power company and other utilities.
The command said it warned al-Zubaidi to stop his actions. ''He instead ... continued his subversive actions,'' it said.
Today's conference, second in a series likely to extend well into May, was expected to attract 300 to 400 delegates from political organizations that had opposed Saddam and from other Iraqi interest groups, said a Garner deputy, Barbara Bodine.
The first meeting was held April 15 in Ur, in southern Iraq, just a week after U.S. troops took control of the Iraqi capital and ousted the Saddam government. Fewer than 100 Iraqis participated, many of them exiles, as some Shiites and others stayed away in protest of potential U.S. influence over selection of a new Iraqi president.
Shiites soften
But in a sign Shiite resistance may be easing, a key Shiite group that shunned the Ur conference--the Iran-based Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq--indicated it might attend today.
In other developments Sunday:
**The United States wants to continue using military bases in friendly Persian Gulf countries and retain the command center in Qatar where war planners directed the invasion of Iraq, American officials say.
**A man shot at two U.S. military vehicles in downtown Baghdad, wounding four soldiers, one seriously. ''There are still some small pockets of resistance in Baghdad,'' said a military spokesman, Capt. David Connolly.
Gannett News Service, with AP contributing
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