Top Saddam official surrenders in Baghdad
A former top official of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, and cousin of the deposed leader, surrendered to coalition forces in Baghdad today, the US military said.
Gen Kamal Mustafa Abdallah Sultan al-Tikriti, the No 10 on the American “Iraqi Top 55 list,” gave himself up this morning, US Central Command said in a statement issued from MacDill Air Force Base, Florida.
Mustafa spent almost his entire career in the Republican Guard. His brother is married to Saddam’s youngest daughter, Hala. He was No 52 on the US list of “most wanted” figures from the ousted regime.
Sultan was the second “Top 55” official to be taken into custody in recent days. On Thursday, Adilabdillah Mahdi al-Duri al-Tikriti, Baath Party regional command chairman for the Dhi Qar district near Tikrit, was taken into custody, the military said.
Earlier today, the American military commander in the region reported that the northern oil city of Kirkuk would become the latest community in Iraq to edge toward democracy next week when it installs a new municipal council.
The body will be elected by 300 community leaders chosen by US authorities, said Maj Gen Ray Odierno, commander of the US Army’s 4th Infantry Division.
They will elect 24 delegates to form a city council, along with six other members hand-picked by Odierno to represent the business community. A mayor and his deputy will be chosen by the council – but subject to Odierno’s approval.
The move comes as the US-led coalition authorities in Iraq seek to re-establish local governments in communities throughout Iraq and gradually transfer authority from the military to civilians as both groups struggle to restore basic public services and improve the security situation.
“You must throw off the chains of a brutal dictatorship and the choke hold of a socialist command economy,” Odierno told residents of Kirkuk at a meeting today. ”The message: You must embrace democracy and a market economy.”
Two other towns, the northern city of Mosul and the southern port town of Umm Qasr, are being governed under similar arrangements with the American and British militaries respectively.
In another effort to restore order in Iraq, the US has tapped a former New York City police chief to help re-establish the police and prison services.
Meanwhile, on the international front it pushed for a vote on a UN resolution that will help rebuild the country, with Russia, China and France making it clear they want major changes in the US-backed resolution.
In Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov, Russia’s diplomatic point man on Iraq, said he believed that despite questions raised by the resolution, sponsored jointly by the US, Britain and Spain, it was possible to reach an acceptable solution.
Fedotov told the ITAR-Tass news agency that the resolution raised questions about “the mandate of temporary occupational forces and their authorities” and also on the process of lifting international sanctions against Iraq.
In Deauville, France, US Treasury secretary John Snow sought today to expand international efforts to determine the size of Iraq’s huge debts – estimated in the tens of billions of US dollars – at a meeting of finance ministers from the Group of Eight nations at this Normandy coast resort.
The Paris Club of 19 creditor nations, which includes the US, is already studying the extent of Iraqi debts. But Washington wants to survey countries that are members of that group to find out how much Iraq owes them, according to a US official.
In Baghdad, L Paul Bremer, US President George W Bush’s new chief civilian administrator for Iraq, wants Bernard Kerik, who led the New York Police Department through the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to “assist in the establishment of security, stability and law and order in Iraq,” a US Defence Department statement said.
Bremer himself has just taken over from retired Lt Gen Jay Garner, whose administration was criticised for failing to stem the breakdown in security in Baghdad and other cities. In recent days, US authorities have blamed security problems on the fact that Saddam emptied Iraq’s prisons in the dying days of his regime, putting tens of thousands of hardened criminals back on the streets.
Even though Baghdad police have begun returning to work – and the US Army sent in 2,000 military policemen and promised more – many of the five million residents of the capital are still afraid to venture out at night. Reports still stream in of kidnappings, rapes and carjackings.
US troops are “trying to keep the bad guys off the streets so the good guys can have normal lives.” 2nd Lt Cody Williams, whose squad is patrolling the streets. Most of those arrested were former prisoners who “are making their way back to prison,” he said.
At the UN, Security Council members finished a paragraph-by-paragraph review of the nine-page revised US draft resolution late Friday. Many called for a stronger UN role in postwar Iraq and greater transparency by the occupying powers, the US and Britain, diplomats said.
Russia and France have called for sanctions to be suspended – not lifted – and for UN weapons inspectors to certify that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction have been eliminated, as called for in the Security Council resolution imposing the punitive measures. The inspection issue is not addressed in the draft resolution.
The alleged presence in Iraq of vast quantities of banned chemical and biological and the imminent danger that some might be transferred to terrorist groups was cited by Washington and London the main reason for the attack on Iraq.
Despite extensive efforts, no trace of those weapons has been discovered.
