Top Saddam aide still on the run

BAGHDAD - Iraq's government says it has not captured the most wanted Saddam Hussein aide still on the run, in an embarrassing climbdown a day after top officials reported he had been seized in a raid by Iraqi forces.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that tests showed that a man in Iraqi custody was not Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who was sixth on a US list of the 55 most wanted members of Saddam's regime and had a US$10 million price on his head.

"The person that has been arrested, after appropriate medical tests, was not al-Douri but somebody related to him, who is also wanted by the state," the ministry said.

The statement followed 24 hours of confusion during which the Defence Ministry and two Iraqi ministers said Ibrahim had been captured near the town of Tikrit, Saddam's former powerbase, only to be contradicted by other officials.

The two ministers gave a detailed account of how Ibrahim had been captured after a battle in which 150 of his followers were killed or captured when they tried to thwart his arrest.

But the regional National Guard commander in Tikrit, and US forces in the area, said they knew nothing about any such battle and had no information on Ibrahim's capture.

The confusion raised new questions about the effectiveness and unity of Iraq's interim government as it prepares for national elections in January and tries to crush a stubborn insurgency and tackle a wave of kidnappings.

There was no immediate explanation from the government on how so many top officials had been so wrong on the reported capture. It was the second time the government has had to make a major retraction since it took over formal sovereignty in June.

Last month the government said police had entered a shrine in Najaf without a shot being fired to recapture it from rebel Shi'ite militiamen holed up inside. The report turned out to be false and the uprising in Najaf did not end until the following week, when Iraq's most revered cleric brokered a peace deal.

BLOW TO GOVERNMENT

The announcement that Ibrahim was not in Iraqi custody, after his supposed arrest was widely reported, is another blow to the government's credibility.

The US military has said Ibrahim played a key role in organising insurgents, and his capture could have struck a blow at guerrillas who are in effective control of at least three major Iraqi cities and towns.

Near Falluja, one of the cities in the hands of insurgents, a suspected car bomb blast killed seven US marines when it destroyed a U.S vehicle on Monday, the American military said.

France said on Monday there were indications two French hostages held in Iraq would be freed and a Muslim negotiator said talks over their release were in the "delivery phase".

"All we can say today is that we have reliable indications that allow us to think they are in good health and that (their) release is possible," Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie told LCI television. "This country (Iraq) is in complete chaos, so that poses major difficulties."

Fouad Alaoui, a member of a French Muslim delegation just back from Iraq, said: "I am of the view that the hostages are no longer in the hands of their first kidnappers but rather in the hands of the Iraqi resistance."

Journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot were seized on August 20 by a militant group called the Islamic Army in Iraq, which demanded Paris scrap a law banning Muslim headscarves in state schools. France refused the demand.

Al Arabiya television reported that a Turkish truck driver held by a different group had been freed after the company that employs him pledged to stop doing business in Iraq. The Turkish government confirmed Mithat Civi had been released.

In Baghdad, several mortar rounds landed near a ministry complex in the east of the city, witnesses said. There were no immediate reports of casualties.


- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq