Monday, November 03, 2003

No Saddam negotiation

PV VIVEKANAND

A REPORT on Sunday that Saddam Hussein is in secret negotiations with US forces in Iraq has been summarily dismissed as unfounded by highly informed intelligence sources and diplomats in the region.
"There is little evidence on the ground to support the report," said a senior source who is in a position to know what is going on in Iraq round-the-clock.
The source was referring to a report in London's Sunday Mirror repor that Saddam was demanding safe passage to the former Soviet republic of Belarus in exchange for information on weapons of mass destruction and his bank accounts.
"It is at best laughable since someone has misled the paper's correspondent, " said the source. "The fact is that the coalition forces occupying Iraq have no clue whatsover at this point as to where Saddam could be, who his supporters are and how he manages to keep himself away from getting caught," said the source.
"It is highly unlikely that Saddam would bargain with the US and flee the country," said a senior Arab diplomat in the region. "It is not in Saddam to do so."
If anything, said the Arab diplomat, "the continuing attacks that inflict daily casualties on the forces occupying Iraq should be seen as a major morale booster for Saddam, regardless of whether it is his loyalists or others who are staging the attacks."
According to the Sunday Mirror report, the purported negotiations with Saddam are conducted with the knowledge of US President George W. Bush, who is being kept up to date on the talks by his national security adviser Condoleeza Rice who is coordinating negotiations led by US general Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq.
"A representative of Saddam in Western-style civilian clothes came to coalition people at Tikrit at sunset on September 12. He led them to a house where the security official was waiting," said a senior Iraqi quoted in the Sunday Mirror.
"The discussions are now going on under the direct authority of Sanchez," the source said, according to the newspaper.
The source, a man, maintained that Saddam had decided to seek a deal " because he is desperate, trapped and finding fewer and fewer people willing to give him shelter," the report said.
Even in the hypothesis that there is any substance to the report, Saddam "should be aware that the US would rather have him dead rather than taking him alive," said a senior European source. "It might be a big boost for Bush to get Saddam alive, given that the US has failed so far to get Osama Bin Laden.
"However, then the US would be burdened with the obligation to unveil the whereabouts the weapons of mass destruction that it alleges were stockpiled by Saddam since they would have Saddam himself to question."
"The fact is," said the European source, "there was never any weapons of mass destruction of the size and nature that the Americans and British cited as the reason for going to war."
"If Saddam is caught and still Bush is unable to unearth the alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, said it would seal Bush's political future for good," said another observer. "Don't forget, Bush has been forced to retract his implict claims earlier that Saddam was also linked to the Sept.11 attacks." "Americans might be lethargic, but they are not stupid to be taken by the argument that the president never said Saddam was behind the attack," added the observer. "Bush never explicitly said so, but he certainly gave a convincing impression to his people that Saddam was indeed responsible for Sept.11."