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Aug. 1, 2003. 07:14 AM

Jordan Grants Saddam's Daughters Asylum

`They have run out of all options'

Husbands slain by Hussein's regime

AMMAN-Two of Saddam Hussein's daughters were granted humanitarian asylum in Jordan yesterday on orders of King Abdullah II.

"They arrived this evening and they are His Majesty's guests for purely humanitarian reasons," Jordanian Information Minister Nabil al-Sharif said. "They are Arab women who have run out of all options."

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell approved the payment of $30 million to the informant who led U.S. troops to the ousted dictator's sons Uday and Qusay, killed in a firefight on July 22. Sharif declined to give details on the circumstances of the arrival of Saddam's eldest daughter, Raghd, 36, and her sister Rana, 34, but said they were accompanied by their nine children.

Saddam's third and favoured daughter, Hala, is still in Iraq, sources said. Her husband, Gen. Jamal Mustafa Tikriti, was arrested following the fall of Baghdad in April.

Raghad and Rana were long estranged from their father but were believed to have reconciled with him. Both lived out of the limelight and neither was linked to the atrocities blamed on their father and brothers.

Their late husbands were brothers Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel and Saddam Kamel who defected to Jordan in 1995 and announced plans to work to overthrow Saddam. Hussein Kamel had headed Iraq's nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs for 10 years.

The brothers were executed when they returned to Baghdad in 1996.

They were accused by Saddam of giving information about Iraq's weapons to the West.

Since the end of the war in April, the two daughters have been living in seclusion in Iraq and hiding with their mother Sajida, under close tribal protection, said Iraqi exile sources in Amman. Raghd and Rana had sought refuge without success in Britain and the United Arab Emirates in recent weeks, the sources added.

Some American officers in Iraq said the daughters' flight to Jordan was another sign that intensified sweeps are squeezing Saddam and other members of the defeated regime.

"It would seem to confirm that his family is on the move, along with his closest associates," said Lt.-Col. Steve Russell, who commands U.S. Army troops patrolling Saddam's home town of Tikrit. "It's good news. Even if it's estranged or extended family, it shows they're on the move."

In recent months, the relatives of some of Iraq's former ruling Baath party leaders have found refuge in Amman, including the family of former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, Jordanian officials privately say.

U.S. officials hope that by following through on the $15 million rewards put on both Uday and Qusay's heads, that it will entice someone in Saddam's shrinking inner circle to turn in the former dictator, who commands a $25 million bounty.

"It's important, first of all, to show people that we do what we say we're going to do," said U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. "We want to make clear that there are other opportunities for similar - almost similar - sums of money to be paid."
Boucher said of the tipster who fingered Saddam's sons: "We're being very careful about the individual's identity in every possible way."

But in Mosul, neighbours of Sheik Nawaf al-Zaydan Muhhamad, the wealthy host and owner of a luxury villa where the men were hiding, said they became suspicious when his wife and their four daughters left the house early on the morning of July 22 and did not return.

Three hours after the women left, U.S. troops knocked on the front door and asked all those inside to come out. Muhhamad and his only son, Shalan, left with their hands on their heads, neighbours said. Coalition forces took them away.

Muhhamad was primarily known in Mosul for two things: Falsely claiming to be a member of Saddam's tribal family and for benefiting richly off his ties to the regime. His brother, Salah, was sentenced to jail for pretending to be a sheik in Saddam's tribe. Muhhamad, a construction contractor, made several million dollars off a contract to build a mammoth mosque of bullet-shaped concrete domes in Mosul.

"This is a sheik made by Saddam Hussein," Sheik Shahar Rashad Al-Hazraji, a neighbour and professed friend of Muhhamad said last week. "He is a hypocrite."