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FROM: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,935601,00.html

Saddam's weapons adviser 'surrenders'

• Joint US-Iraqi patrols to tackle looting
  
  
• Saddam and son 'alive'
  
  
• Turkey will not send troops to north Iraq
  
  
• US military turns to Tikrit

Staff and agencies

Saturday April 12, 2003

Amir al-Saadi, science adviser to Saddam Hussein, before his surrender to US forces. Photo: AP

Saddam Hussein's senior weapons adviser has reportedly 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 top Iraqi wanted for questioning about Iraq'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, which 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.

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, made often in news conferences before the US-led invasion, that Iraq was free of weapons of mass destruction.

According to ZDF's correspondent in Baghdad, Ulrich Tilgner, Lt-Gen al-Saadi said 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.

In Doha, Qatar, the US Central Command said it had no information on the reported surrender.

Lt-Gen Al-Saadi was among the key Iraqi figures who worked with UN weapons inspectors and often spoke for the Iraqi government in news conferences between the resumption of inspections in November and their end last month.

Joint US-Iraqi patrols to tackle disorder

The US military and Iraqi police officials have agreed to joint patrols to restore order in Baghdad, after days of lawlessness and looting. Iraqi police Colonel Mohammed Zaki said the patrols would start in a day or two. US Marine Staff Sergeant Jeremy Stafford said the patrols would start "sooner rather than later".

"Anyone who carries a weapon or fires a weapon, we will fire at," Col Zaki said.

The agreement came after a day of meetings between US marines and Iraqi police officials.

The marines confirmed that a night curfew was under discussion, but it appears the hours of the curfew have yet to be set. They were worried about setting it too early and curtailing Muslim early morning prayers.

Full story: Short demands bigger effort to end disorder

Looting continues in Baghdad

Earlier today, US forces reopened two strategic bridges in the heart of Baghdad, allowing crowds of looters to surge across and take advantage of access to new territory that had not already been plundered. Looting also raged in the northern towns of Basra and Mosul.

As well as ransacking government buildings, hospitals and schools, looters have also targeted the Iraqi national museum in Baghdad, taking or destroying many of the country's archaeological treasures.

The national museum held artefacts from thousands of years of history in the Tigris-Euphrates basin, widely held to be the site of the world's earliest civilisations.

Full story: Mosul descends into chaos

Iraqis protest against lawlessness

Iraqis gathered in central Baghdad today calling for an end to the looting and lawlessness that have broken out across the city since the overthrow of Saddam.

About 100 Iraqis, many of them students, protested outside Baghdad's central Palestine hotel, where most foreign journalists are based.

"We want to cooperate with the new Iraqi government and American troops to keep peace and security," Dhargham Adnan, 25, a student from Baghdad university, told Reuters news agency.

Mr Adnan said US troops did not appear to be doing anything to stop the looting of most public buildings in the capital.

Saddam and son 'alive'

A prominent opponent of Saddam says the toppled Iraqi dictator is alive and may be north-east of Baghdad, according to an Italian newspaper report. Also today, Baghdad residents said 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 returned to Iraq just before the US-led military attack, 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," Mr 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.

Mr Chalabi has friends in the Pentagon and in Congress and has been tipped as a future leader of Iraq. His opponents say he is unknown to Iraqis inside Iraq - a handicap he now seems determined to overcome.

He also played down fears of discord among Iraq's various ethnic and religious groups.

"Even among all the tribal chiefs that visit me and invite me to visit them, I see a great desire for agreement, for common plans. I think that the Kurds will accept a pluralistic state, that the Sunni and Shia have understood that this is not the time for religious disputes but for reconstruction," Mr Chalabi told the paper.

Meanwhile residents of the Baghdad suburb of Mansur said today that they had seen Saddam's younger son Qusay alive shortly after US bombs flattened a building in an attempt to kill Saddam and his sons last Monday (April 7).

There was no way of independently corroborating the claims.

Turkey will not send troops to northern Iraq

Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, said today 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 Mr 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. Washington fears that a Turkish intervention could undermine its war effort in the north by provoking clashes between Turkish forces and Kurds in northern Iraq.

Turkey has an estimated 5,000 troops in northern Iraq. Tens of thousands of troops reinforced by tanks, self-propelled howitzers and armoured personnel carriers have long been deployed along the border.

Combat continues, says US military

Combat continues in a "number of areas" of Iraq, US Brigadier General Vincent Brooks said today.

Brig Gen Brooks said that US-led forces were turning their attention to the southern town of Kut, where he said there were "still indications there may be a regime presence".

He went on to say that while fresh water remained a "challenge", humanitarian aid in the form of wheat and other supplies was arriving by the shipload from countries such as Australia.

US troops today also took the last known stronghold of non-Iraqi Arab fighters in Baghdad.

US army staff sergeant David Richards told Reuters that the opposition encountered in the last few days had faded to almost nothing this morning when US forces took control of the information and foreign ministries in the Mansur district of Baghdad.

U.S. heads for Saddam's home town

With Saddam's regime now toppled in Iraq's three main cities - Baghdad, Basra and Mosul - the focus of the military assault shifted to Tikrit, 100 miles north of Baghdad.

Die-hard regime supporters are thought to be regrouping there, possibly for a bloody last stand.

Remnants of the Republican Guard's Adnan Division and regular Iraqi forces around Tikrit have been pounded from the air for weeks, and allied military officials are increasingly confident of a quick victory.

Some Iraqi troops are already thought to have fled and military sources said the soldiers at Tikrit were not an effective fighting force.

In what is expected to be the final battle of the war the remaining Saddam loyalists at Tikrit will probably face the US 4th Infantry Division.

There have already been reports of Kurdish fighters attacking Iraqi positions at Tikrit and five small camouflaged planes, believed to be for regime leaders to escape in, were found nearby.

Syria is considered to be their likeliest bolt hole and the US president, George Bush, warned the country not to give sanctuary to Saddam, his relatives or any of his fleeing henchmen.

US troops enter Mosul

US soldiers today moved into the city of Mosul in northern Iraq, after Iraqi troops surrendered there yesterday.

As in other cities in Iraq, looters were raiding shops and government buildings throughout the city and the US military said that the situation was still dangerous.

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.

[TVOTW Insert - Full verification of the truth. The Iraqi military were ordered to provide no resistance. This confirms that the whole offensive - the bombing - the missiles - the killings - were all a pretence. There was never any fighting OR RESISTANCE. In other words - noone was shooting back at U.S. forces. So - if noone was shooting at them - WHY WERE U.S. forces shooting or bombing anyone - anywhere in Iraq? - right from day one - 20 Mch 2003. It was all a monstrous charade - a concerted and premeditated course of state sponsored TERRORISM and AGGRESSION using weapons of mass destruction against unarmed civilians - ALL - for the benefit of the rest of the world at the expense of a people who were savaged and annihilated - FOR NOTHING more than the Bush/Blair murderous - tyrannical - maniacal - political agenda.]

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."

The officer also offered an explanation why the much-anticipated street fighting had failed to materialise in Baghdad.

"If you want to fight, you should fight out of your home. If I fight in my city, there are our families, our babies," he said.

'Suicide vests' found in Baghdad school

US soldiers have found a cache of suicide bomb vests in a primary school in central Baghdad.

On the floor of the science classroom soldiers found nearly 50 black leather vests, each packed with C4 explosives and ball bearings.

In the school's courtyard, US soldiers found cardboard boxes filled with detonators with two red switches on one side and Velcro on the other. They also found a roll of red detonation chord, three boxes of dynamite and a crate of electrical chords in a box marked "explosives".

Nearby, they discovered stacks of plastic bags filled with blocks of reddish brown putty that the soldiers said could be explosives.

Interim authority talks

Washington has confirmed that a meeting of Iraqi opposition leaders and US officials to discuss the formation of an interim government will take place in the southern city of Nassiriya on Tuesday.

US state department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "We expect this to be the first in a series of regional meetings that will provide a forum for Iraqis to discuss their vision of the future."

Desperate hunt for banned arsenal

Britain and the US have bypassed the United Nations to establish a secret team of inspectors to resume the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

An Anglo-American team has already conducted three inspections in the past two weeks, a move which is seen as a sign of the desperation in London and Washington to find a "smoking gun" to justify the war.

The decision to set up a new group of inspectors, dubbed US-movic, will infuriate the U.N.

FROM: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,935601,00.html

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