[casi] News, 09-16/04/03 (10)

[Peter Brooke <pbrooke@DELETETHISukonline.co.uk>]

News, 09-16/04/03 (10)

WHAT'S NEXT?

*  Heed lesson of Iraq, US warns
*  Oil from Iraq: an Israeli pipe dream?
*  Rumsfeld accuses Syria of sheltering Ba'athists
*  A strong warning to Syria
*  After Iraq, where will Bush go next: 'fascist' Syria, theocratic Iran, or
communist North Korea?
*  US warned over Syria stance
*  Syria, One Way or Another, Has to Be Next

VICTORS' JUSTICE

*  US issues list of 55 Iraqi leaders for arrest or killing
*  First came Khan, now Bush
*  Qusay seen fleeing after blitz on building
*  Top Saddam aide surrenders
*  Saddam's half-brother captured by coalition
* SAS patrol apprehends senior Iraqi military staff


WHAT'S NEXT?

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c
=StoryFT&cid=1048313610714&p=1012571727172

*  HEED LESSON OF IRAQ, US WARNS
by Guy Dinmore in Washington
Financial Times, 9th April

The US administration on Wednesday warned other countries intent on
developing weapons of mass destruction - such as Iran, Syria, and North
Korea - to "draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq".

However, John Bolton (pictured), undersecretary of state for arms control,
said that Washington's guiding principle was "the peaceful elimination of
these programmes".

"We are hopeful that a number of regimes will draw the appropriate lesson
from Iraq that the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is not in their
national interest," he said at a press conference in Rome.

Senior US officials believe that regime change in Iran can be achieved
through an internal "velvet revolution" supported by the Bush
administration. US policy towards the country will therefore focus on
sanctions and international pressure rather than military intervention, they
say.

Washington analysts believe the appetite for war among "hawks" will be sated
- in spite of the swiftness of victory in Iraq. Nonetheless, the potential
mix of weapons of mass destruction and terrorist groups remains the key US
security concern and the policy of pre emptive action will dominate debate.

Over the past two weeks, Colin Powell, secretary of state, and Condoleezza
Rice, national security adviser, have delivered tough warnings to Iran over
its nuclear programme and support for militant Palestinian groups and
Lebanon's Hizbollah.

"The laid-back approach to non-proliferation is over," a senior
administration official, who asked not to be identified, told the Financial
Times. He expressed a widely held view in Washington that the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, had not lived up to
its responsibilities.

The official said pressure would be brought to bear on the IAEA and Iran for
the Islamic republic to sign protocols obliging it to disclose plans to
build any more nuclear facilities - rather than a post-facto declaration and
submission to more intrusive inspections. But the US suspected that Iran was
also building a heavy-water reactor that had not been declared to the IAEA.

If Iran did not agree to tighter international surveillance, then the US
intended to threaten sanctions and take the issue to the UN Security
Council, the official said.

Ryan Crocker, deputy assistant secretary of state, suggested that Iran had
taken heed of Washington's warnings, noting that Hizbollah had been
reasonably quiet on Israel's northern border. "We tried to get across that
it's very important it should stay quiet."

He said the US was "at a crossroads" in its policy towards Iran, and
expressed the prevailing view in the Bush administration that Mohammad
Khatami, the moderate president, had failed in nearly six years in office to
achieve any meaningful reforms.

On Syria, Mr Bolton expressed hopes that Damascus would give up its chemical
and biological weapons programmes and promote regional security.


http://www.dailystar.com.lb/10_04_03/art23.asp

*  OIL FROM IRAQ: AN ISRAELI PIPE DREAM?
by Ed Blanche
Lebanon Daily Star, 10th April

BEIRUT: Israel stands to benefit greatly from the US-led war on Iraq,
primarily by getting rid of an implacable foe in Saddam Hussein and the
threat of the weapons of mass destruction he is alleged to possess. But it
seems the Israelis have other things in mind as well that give some weight
to mounting concern in the Middle East that once Saddam has been disposed
of, the regimes in Iran and Syria are next on George W. Bush's hit list.

An intriguing pointer to one potentially significant benefit was a report by
the Israeli daily Haaretz on March 31 that National Infrastructure Minister
Joseph Paritzky was seriously considering the possibility of reopening the
long-defunct oil pipeline from Mosul to the Mediterranean port of Haifa in
northern Israel.

With Israel lacking energy resources of its own and currently totally
dependent on highly expensive oil from Russia, reopening the pipeline would
transform its economy at a stroke.

On Wednesday, a source at Paritzky's office said the Israeli minister would
meet Jordanian officials to discuss restarting the pipeline, but Amman
quickly denied the report.

"We know the section of the pipeline here is in excellent condition but we
want to know what the Jordanian part is like and whether it can be restarted
easily," the Israeli source said.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan al-Moasher flatly denied the report,
saying on Al Jazeera it was "devoid of truth."

"As you know relations between Israel and Jordan are now very cold and no
Israeli minister has visited Jordan for a long time," Moasher said.

"We have repeatedly clarified that political relations between us and Israel
relies on Israel's seriousness to advance in the peace process," he added.

It is not clear why the Israelis would want at such a critical moment to
disclose that such a plan involving Iraq, an implacable enemy of the Jewish
state under Saddam, is being considered. Doing so can only jeopardize its
prospects because no aspiring Iraqi leader can be seen to be having any
truck with Israel at this time. But US influence in Iraq could ultimately be
pervasive enough for what for the time being appears to be a madcap scheme.

The pipeline has been inoperative since 1948, when the flow of oil from
Iraq's northern oil fields, which US and Kurdish forces are currently
securing, was redirected from Haifa to Syria after the British mandate in
Palestine expired. To resume supplies from Mosul to the refinery at Haifa
would require the approval of the Syrian government, which must be ruled out
given the state of war that still exists between Syria and Israel. Such
approval is unlikely to be forthcoming under the current regime in Syria
while Israel continues to occupy part of the Golan Heights captured in 1967.

So for the pipeline to start pumping again would, in the present
circumstances, require another regime change, this time in Damascus. So if
the Americans have set their sights on Damascus, the Israelis would be
overjoyed.

Clearly, all of this lends weight to the theory that Bush's war is part of a
masterplan, inspired by pro-Israeli right-wing hawks catapulted to power in
the administration by Sept. 11, to reshape the Middle East to serve Israel's
interests. Haaretz quoted Paritzky as saying that the pipeline project is
economically justifiable because it would dramatically reduce Israel's
energy bill.

On the strategic level, reopening the pipeline would mean that Israel would
not have to depend for its oil on distant suppliers and would have a measure
of energy security it has not enjoyed since the 1979 overthrow of the
monarchy in Iran, a key regional ally which supplied all Israel's oil needs
via a pipeline from Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba to the Mediterranean port of
Ashkelon in southern Israel.

(Israel captured Egyptian oil fields in Sinai in 1967, but had to relinquish
these, worth around $1 billion a year, when it gave up the peninsula under
its landmark peace treaty with Egypt in 1979.)

Paritzky said that he was certain the Americans would respond favorably to
the idea of resurrecting the Mosul-Haifa pipeline. That is not particularly
surprising. Under a little known Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) dated
Sept. 1, 1975, then-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger negotiated an
agreement with Israel that guaranteed to meet all Israel's oil needs in the
event of a crisis.

The MOU, which has been quietly renewed every five years, also committed the
US to construct and stock a supplementary strategic reserve for Israel,
equivalent to some $3 billion in 2002 dollars. Special legislation was
enacted to exempt Israel from restrictions on oil exports from the US.

Moreover, the Americans agreed to divert oil from their home market, even if
that entailed domestic shortages, and guaranteed delivery of the promised
oil in its own tankers if commercial shippers were unwilling or not
available to carry the crude to Israel. All of this adds up to a potentially
massive financial commitment to Israel, over and above the nearly $900
billion in identifiable budgeted aid with which the US had provided Israel
since 1949 (and not counting the billions more in grants and other financial
support that are not classified as foreign aid).

The Americans have another reason for supporting Paritzky's project: a land
route for Iraqi oil direct to the Mediterranean that would lessen US
dependence on Gulf oil supplies. With the renewed post-Sept. 11 emphasis on
energy security in Washington, direct access to the world's second-largest
oil reserves (with the possibility these can be immensely expanded through
so-far untapped deposits) is an important strategic objective.

Any resumption of Mosul oil to Israel will rest in the long term with a new
government in Baghdad. It is thus not surprising that the powerful Israel
lobby in the US has in recent weeks been in a huddle with senior figures in
Iraq's anti-Saddam opposition, seeking to secure a more moderate approach to
Israel by whatever government emerges following Saddam's downfall.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has been discreetly
building links with most of the Iraqi opposition groups for some years and
has recently held talks with Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the CIA-backed Iraqi
National Congress (INC), the main dissident umbrella group.

The lobby's main objective has been to persuade the opposition groups that
will provide many of the new national leadership in post-Saddam Iraq to have
friendly relations with Israel. Both sides have gone to great lengths to
keep their relationship secret, since it could jeopardize the standing of
leading Iraqis seen to be too cozy with AIPAC and Israel.

Still, the relationship became more public last week when the lobby invited
Intifad Qanbar, head of the INC's Washington office, to its annual
conference in the US capital. As it happened, Qanbar was unable to attend
because the Americans whisked him off to northern Iraq to organize
anti-Saddam opposition there. His place was taken by another prominent
dissident, Kanan Makiya, author of Republic of Fear, published in 1989,
which unveiled the barbarity of Saddam's regime.

One AIPAC activist was quoted by Haaretz as saying: "You have to be
realistic about your aims. You have to understand that Iraq will be an Arab
state, and that it won't want to adopt a controversial foreign policy." But
he said that the lobby expects any new Iraqi regime to adopt a position
"perhaps something like the position taken by Saudi Arabia or the Gulf
states."

Jewish sources in the US have noted that while Chalabi's people have
expressed positive opinions regarding Israel, Adnan Pachachi, another
opposition leader who recently founded a movement that competes with the
INC, said last week in London that he did not expect good relations between
the new Iraq and Israel, as this would be antithetical to Iraqi interests.

Now that Paritzky's project is out in the open, it is sure to intensify Arab
fury against the Americans for invading Iraq. That, in turn, is likely to
result in some adroit diplomatic shuffling by the Americans. It may even
mean the pipeline idea will be dropped, as other such projects by Israel to
plug into Iraq's oil have been (including one in 1987 that involved pumping
the oil to Haifa via the Golan).

However, it is worth noting that the Americans and Israelis were involved in
talks in the mid-1980s to develop a pipeline from Iraq (then locked in a war
with Iran in which Tehran's ally, Damascus, had cut off the flow of Iraqi
oil across its territory to the Mediterranean) across Jordan to the port of
Aqaba, a stone's throw from Eilat. Among the US participants was Donald
Rumsfeld, then an adviser to Ronald Reagan, and the American Bechtel
Corporation headed by future Secretary of State James Baker.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,933502,00.html

*  RUMSFELD ACCUSES SYRIA OF SHELTERING BA'ATHISTS
by Julian Borger in Washington and Ian Black
The Guardian, 10th April

The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, yesterday accused Syria of
helping senior members of Iraq's Ba'ath regime to escape.

In some cases the fugitives were stopping when they got to Syria, but others
were travelling on to other countries. "Senior regime people are moving out
of Iraq and into Syria," Mr Rumsfeld said. Asked what evidence he had, he
said the US was getting "scraps of evidence" Syria had been "facilitating"
the traffic in leading Ba'athists.

Mr Rumsfeld also said that the US had evidence that some Syrians were moving
into Iraq "unhelpfully". He did not make clear whether he was accusing Syria
of actively assisting resistance to the coalition advance.

Mr Rumsfeld also warned Syria, Iran and North Korea to draw the "appropriate
lesson" from the demise of the Iraqi regime, and abandon their own pursuit
of weapons of mass destruction.

His warning came hours after another of Washington's leading hawks pointed
an accusatory finger at Damascus. John Bolton, the under- secretary of state
for arms control and international security, appealed to Syria and other
Middle Eastern countries to open up to "new possibilities" for peace in the
region.

Syria is not formally a member of President George Bush's "axis of evil" -
Iraq, Iran and North Korea - but it is nervous that it might attract the
attention of a US emboldened by the fall of Saddam.

"I think Syria is a good case where I hope that they will conclude that the
chemicals weapons programme and the biological weapons programme that they
have been pursuing are things that they should give up," Mr Bolton said on a
visit to Rome

"It is a wonderful opportunity for Syria to foreswear the pursuit of weapons
of mass destruction and, as with other governments in the region, to see if
there are not new possibilities in the Middle East peace process." He made
no mention of Israel's nuclear weapons capability, routinely cited by Arab
states as justification for their own interest in non-conventional weapons.

Britain has been alarmed by recent US threats against Iran and Syria,
fearing that Washington hardliners believe they can go on to force regime
change elsewhere. Tony Blair's urgent priority is to persuade President Bush
to engage with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, both for its own sake,
and to persuade sceptical Arabs that the west cares about the Palestinians
as well as freeing Iraqis from tyranny.

On Monday Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, said Britain would have
"nothing to do" with threats against Damascus and Tehran, and announced a
relaxation of export controls on dual-use civilian and military equipment
for Iran.

Mr Blair then phoned the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, to assure him
that Britain opposed "targeting" his country, which is also ruled by a
branch of the Ba'ath party.

The US has warned Damascus over reported shipments of night-vision goggles
to Iraq. Mr Rumsfeld described the shipments as "hostile acts".

Washington also takes a harder line than Britain on Syrian support for
Hizbullah, the Lebanse guerrilla group that fights Israel.

US and British forces have yet to uncover any of the chemical or biological
weapons UN inspectors failed to find in Iraq. But Mr Bolton made clear that
Washington had not abandoned an active disarmament agenda. "With respect to
the issue of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the
post-conflict period, we are hopeful that a number of regimes will draw the
appropriate lesson from Iraq," he said.

Mention of North Korea and Iran will also cause alarm. Britain and its
European partners take a far more benign view of the regime in Tehran, and
also believe diplomatic engagement is the only way to deal with Pyongyang.

Mr Bolton said "the peaceful elimination" of these programmes was the
guiding principle in Washington.


http://www.iht.com/articles/93022.html

*  A STRONG WARNING TO SYRIA
by Barry James
International, 12th April

PARIS: Richard Perle, one of the chief U.S. ideologists behind the war to
oust Saddam Hussein, warned Friday that the United States would be compelled
to act if it discovered that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have been
concealed in Syria.

Perle said that if the Bush administration were to learn that Syria had
taken possession of such Iraqi weapons, "I'm quite sure that we would have
to respond to that."

"It would be an act of such foolishness on Syria's part," he continued,
"that it would raise the question of whether Syria could be reasoned with.
But I suppose our first approach would be to demand that the Syrians
terminate that threat by turning over anything they have come to possess,
and failing that I don't think anyone would rule out the use of any of our
full range of capabilities."

In an interview with editors of the International Herald Tribune, Perle said
that the threat posed by terrorists he described as "feverishly" looking for
weapons to kill as many Americans as possible obliged the United States to
follow a strategy of preemptive war in its own defense.

Asked if this meant it would go after other countries after Iraq, he
replied: "If next means who will next experience the 3d Army Division or the
82d Airborne, that's the wrong question. If the question is who poses a
threat that the United States deal with, then that list is well known. It's
Iran. It's North Korea. It's Syria. It's Libya, and I could go on."

Perle, a Pentagon adviser as a member of the Defense Policy Board, said the
point about Afghanistan and now Iraq was that the United States had been put
in a position of having to use force to deal with a threat that could not be
managed in any other way.

The message to other countries on the list is "give us another way to manage
the threat," he said, adding, "Obviously, our strong preference is always
going to be to manage threats by peaceful means, and every one of the
countries on the 'who's next?' list is in a position to end the threat by
peaceful means."

"So the message to Syria, to Iran, to North Korea, to Libya should be clear.
if we have no alternative, we are prepared to do what is necessary to defend
Americans and others. But that doesn't mean that we are readying the troops
for a next military engagement. We are not."

The former official in Republican administrations said the United States
also has "a serious problem" with Saudi Arabia, where he said both private
individuals and the government had poured money into extremist
organizations.

"This poses such an obvious threat to the United States that it is
intolerable that they continue to do this," he warned.

He said he had no doubt that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

"We will not find them unless we stumble across them," he said, "until we
are able to interview those Iraqis who know where they are. The prospect of
inspections may have had the effect of causing the relocation of the weapons
and their hiding in a manner that would minimize their discovery, which I
believe will turn out to mean burying things underground in inaccessible
places."

He added that the speed of the coalition advance, "may have precluded
retrieving and using those weapons in a timely fashion."

Asked if the United States was doomed to follow a policy of preemption
alone, Perle replied that it is necessary to restructure the United Nations
to take account of security threats that arise within borders rather than
are directed across borders.

"There is no doubt that if some of the organizations that are determined to
destroy this country could lay their hands on a nuclear weapon they would
detonate it, and they would detonate in the most densely populated cities in
this country, with a view to killing as many Americans as possible, " he
said. Yet there was nothing in the UN charter authorizing collective
preemption to avoid such threats.

"I think the charter could say that the terrorist threat is a threat to all
mankind," Perle said.

Perle said resentment over France's opposition to the war ran so deep in the
United States that he doubted there could ever be a basis for constructive
relations between the two governments.

"When you have both the government and the opposition agreed on one thing,
which is that they are not sure whether they want Saddam Hussein to win,
that is a shocking development and Americans have been shocked. The freedom
fries and all the rest is a pretty deeply held sentiment. I am afraid this
is not something that is easily patched and cannot be dealt with simply in
the normal diplomatic way. because the feeling runs too deep. it's gone way
beyond the diplomats."

Perle said he had no doubt the world is safer than it was a month ago. "The
idea that liberating Iraq would spawn terrorists all over the Muslim world I
think will be proven to be wrong, and it will be proven to be wrong by the
Iraqis themselves . We are about to learn what life has been like under
Saddam Hussein. Even in the tough world we are living in, people are going
to be shocked about the depravity and sadism of the Saddam regime."

Perle said there were good reasons to support the Middle East peace process,
but not in a way that suggests the United States has caused damage by the
war in Iraq.

"The sense that we somehow owe this to the Arab world only diminishes the
essential truth about what we've done in Iraq," he said. "We have not
damaged Arab interests. We have advanced them by freeing 25 million people
from this brutal dictatorship."


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=StoryFT&cid=1048313725845&p=1012571727172

*  AFTER IRAQ, WHERE WILL BUSH GO NEXT: 'FASCIST' SYRIA, THEOCRATIC IRAN, OR
COMMUNIST NORTH KOREA?
by Gerard Baker
Financial Times, 14th April

"The mission begins in Baghdad but it does not end there. Were the US to
retreat after victory into complacency, new dangers would soon arise. War in
Iraq represents but the first instalment."

With US troops securing positions in Baghdad, it is hard to imagine a more
concise formulation of what so unnerves much of the world about the possible
direction of 21st century America than this last sentence of a new book
co-written by an influential Washington conservative and a liberal
internationalist.

William Kristol and Lawrence Kaplan, in their recently published War Over
Iraq, argue for a course of action that has come to be seen by many outside
America as the settled course of US foreign policy after Iraq. Mr Kristol is
the founder of the Project for the New American Century, the
neo-conservative think-tank that has among its friends in the Bush
administration Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary and architect of
the Iraq strategy. Mr Kaplan is a senior editor at the left-leaning New
Republic.

Their vision - Iraq as but the first act in a multi-part drama in which the
US confronts the despots and failing states around the world that threaten
its security - appears to fit perfectly the Bush administration's
post-September 11 strategic worldview.

President George W. Bush has already laid out his doctrine of pre- emption,
warning governments everywhere that the US will not tolerate challenges to
its power and will root out threats from weapons of mass destruction. His
January 2002 State of the Union speech identified the "axis of evil" as the
principal candidates for regime change.

Before the Iraq war, some officials were letting it be known that only the
temporary preoccupation with Iraq prevented them from dealing more bluntly
with the growing provocations from North Korea.

In recent weeks US officials say intelligence has accumulated that suggests
Iran is rapidly accelerating its nuclear programme and is an increasingly
serious menace to the US. In the past week, the revolving gun turret of the
Bush doctrine has pivoted and come to a menacing halt. Donald Rumsfeld
accused Syria of "hostile acts" in funnelling dangerous material to Iraq
during the war. The defence secretary added to the charge sheet against
Damascus last week when he said Bashar Assad's government was harbouring
members of the Iraqi leadership and would be "held accountable".

Earlier, James Woolsey, former CIA chief and a candidate for a position in
the interim Iraqi government, said the US was now engaged in world war IV -
following the cold war as world war III. The enemy were "the religious
rulers of Iran, the fascists of Iraq and Syria, and Islamic extremists like
al-Qaeda".

The spectacular military success in Iraq surely will strengthen the
temptation to turn such threats into action. The armchair generals who after
a week of war began to wonder whether the much-vaunted US military might was
all it was cracked up to be, have, like the guns of the Republican Guard,
fallen silent. The scale and quality of the victory illustrates in vivid
detail what no dry statistics about US defence spending or gross domestic
product ever could.

In the teeth of almost universally hostile public opinion around the world,
against the active obstruction of important foreign governments, amid
misgivings at home, the US has assembled a large military force, shipped it
half way around the world, struck at and removed a regime from a large
foreign country in an unfriendly region, all while sustaining fewer than
perhaps 100 combat fatalities.

All this in an environment as militarily unaccommodating as it is possible
to imagine. Prevented by politics and geography from conducting the
multi-pronged campaign its commanders would have liked, a small and muscular
US (and British) force simply burst out of a tiny pocket of Iraq and
overwhelmed the whole country in the space of three weeks.

So it is little wonder that the globe watches and waits to know the identity
of the next candidate for the Rumsfeld treatment. But before the world heads
to its collective bunker a dose of reality may be in order. Political,
economic and geostrategic pressures on the administration all militate
strongly against the idea of an Operation Syrian Freedom or Iranian Justice.

Although such a prospect may put a sparkle in the eye of one or two of the
Pentagon's more zealous neo-imperialists, it is not the intention of the
Bush administration - including those most identified with the
transformation of US strategic doctrine - to favour pre-emptive action. Mr
Wolfowitz told NBC News recently: "We'd like to see change in a lot of
places, but it's going to come about by different means in different places.
I think it's important in putting together and sustaining this coalition
that's made extraordinary strides in fighting global terrorism that we make
it clear that the military is not the only instrument - it isn't even
necessarily the main instrument."

Privately, officials acknowledge this reflects the fact that they have not
really decided what to do at this relatively early stage and that, to a
large extent, they will be responding to events as much as shaping them. And
there continue to be differing views in different parts of the
administration over what should come next. "There really is no cookie-cutter
approach to dealing with these threats," says one senior administration
official. "We will have to wait, watch and see."

Despite an understandable mood of vindication at the White House about the
outcome of the Iraq war, there is an acknowledgement that the international
environment is hardly conducive to further forceful action by the US. Most
importantly, Iraq alone will hold US military and diplomatic attention for
many months.

And although the weight of international opinion did not in the end stop the
US from pursuing its preferred course on Iraq, the Bush administration was
anxious to portray the war, however dubiously, as the work of a grand
coalition of nations. The views of critical allies, especially Britain, will
have to be given full consideration in the assessment of what comes next.
Tony Blair, British prime minister, is urging that immediate action be taken
on the Middle East peace process. The Bush administration is unlikely to go
as far as Mr Blair wants in putting pressure on Israel. But that itself will
complicate getting international support for any other US-led action.

Domestic political considerations will also constrain Mr Bush's freedom to
tackle more problematic regimes. Recent history and current domestic
political trends suggest the US public's overwhelming reaction to victory in
Iraq will be a desire for a period of quiet on the international front.
Indeed the most powerful domestic political pressure in these times - as
seen after the last Gulf war, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan - was the
popular call to "bring the troops home".

Opinion polls confirm this. An ABC News Washington Post poll last Thursday
found 60 per cent of respondents were concerned the US will get mired in a
long and costly peacekeeping effort in Iraq.

A critical confluence of economic and political timetables is also
militating against aggressive international action. The 2004 presidential
election is now just 18 months away. Mr Bush's political advisers, led by
Karl Rove, have gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid repeating the mistake
of George Bush Sr, who never matched his foreign policy successes with the
achievement of domestic prosperity.

Today the economic parallels with the US at the end of the last Gulf war are
notable. US output is set to grow by about 2.2 per cent this year, according
to the latest International Monetary Fund forecast, the third consecutive
year of below-trend growth. The US has lost more than 400,000 jobs in the
past two months. Manufacturing output has been declining continuously for
almost three years. In 1991, growth overall was below trend for the third
straight year. In the two months before the end of the Gulf war in 1991,
employment declined by 550,000 and, at the time of the Iraqi surrender,
manufacturing output had been declining more or less steadily for more than
two years.

Indeed, war in Iraq in 2003, just as in 1991, has largely obscured rising
domestic political discontent with Mr Bush's economic policies. Polls now
indicate fewer than half of Americans approve of them.

The Bush budget has run into heavy domestic political fire. It manages the
unusual feat of inflating the budget deficit without providing much
immediate stimulus. By increasing defence spending and giving long-term tax
relief principally to the better off, it threatens to inflict further damage
on an already weakening fiscal position. The verdict of one former senior
economic policymaker in Washington, that it is a "guns and Guccis" budget,
resonates widely.

The Senate has proposed slashing half the tax cut; even House Republicans
are now nervous about the political consequences of backing the proposals.
All these domestic and international constraints point toa period of
consolidation rather than expansion for US foreign policy.

But conservatives inside and outside the administration are determined to
ensure that this Bush administration has learned another lesson from the
last Bush presidency, which failed to follow up victory over Iraq with a
serious commitment to provoking regime change in the Arab world. Many
critics, some of whom are now highly influential in the administration,
thought then that the Gulf war should have been pursued to its logical
conclusion in Baghdad. They are now arguing that victory this time offers an
even better opportunity to pursue with real purpose US goals in the region
and avoid the pitfalls of 1991. As Mr Kristol says: "I don't think there's
much chance Bush will make that mistake. He has a powerful sense of what
changed on September 11; that the US simply cannot sit back and let events
dictate themselves to us."

The Bush administration seems to merit that confidence. The critical figure
in determining what happens next is probably Dick Cheney, the vice
president, who as defence secretary in the last Bush administration was
instrumental in the decision to halt US military action after Iraq had been
expelled from Kuwait.

Aides say Mr Cheney has shed his realist view of the world in recent years
and, especially since September 11 2001, appears to have come to accept the
argument that the US can only be safe if it moves urgently to eliminate
despotic regimes, especially in the Arab world. Mr Cheney has had some
intriguing guests at the White House in recent months - Fouad Adjami, the
Arab academic who has argued strongly for tackling the sclerosis in Middle
Eastern regimes, Bernard Lewis, author of What Went Wrong,a widely read
account of the catastrophic decline of the Arab world in the last century,
and Aaron Friedberg, the eminent Princeton University academic of
neo-conservative views.

Mr Bush himself, in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute in
February, seemed to commit the US to the goal of pursuing democratic change
in the region: "It is presumptuous and insulting to suggest that a whole
region of the world - or the one-fifth of humanity that is Muslim - is
somehow untouched by the most basic aspirations of life," he said.

But even if the Bush administration has signed on to the basic
neo-conservative view that calls for the aggressive pursuit of democratic
change, especially in the Muslim world, it is not clear that the US is
committing itself to a series of military campaigns. Even Mr Kristol stops
well short of arguing for more military action. "It's right to talk about
regime change," he says. "But we should exert strong diplomatic and
political pressure towards regime change. It's right to think we have quite
a good chance of getting it without military action." And Mr Kristol's
co-author, Mr Kaplan, argues in the latest edition of The New Republic that
Syria should not be a military target.

In fact, administration officials seem to be placing faith in the
proposition that the example of Iraq may be enough in itself to induce the
change the US wants. There are two aspects to this demonstration effect. The
first is the much-derided "domino effect" - the notion that Arabs and others
will see a functioning democracy in Iraq and decide they want one for
themselves. "It's not something mechanical," said Mr Wolfowitz last weekend.
"It's the effect of a good example, and we have seen the effect of good
examples in Asia, over a long period of time - it doesn't happen overnight."

But as Mr Wolfowitz acknowledges, this remains a longer-term hope rather
than an immediate tool of policy. Officials also argue, however, that there
is another form of demonstration effect arising from victory in Baghdad that
could be much more immediate. The spectacle of such a comprehensive US
military victory might concentrate the minds of governments in Syria and
Iran, they say, and force them to change - first by halting their support
for terrorism and perhaps eventually by liberalising. "Would you rather be
trying to negotiate with Syria after a war with Iraq, or before a war
against Iraq?" a senior Republican close to the administration told an
audience of academics and policymakers in Washington last week.

The aim is to intensify diplomatic pressure - through multilateral as well
as bilateral means - to induce change; at a minimum, in Syria's case, to
stop them harbouring and arming hostile Iraqis and supporting terrorism. It
does not hurt at all that the US now has tens of thousands of troops on
Syria's and Iran's doorstep to add weight to that effort. Similarly, outside
Iraq's immediate vicinity, US officials hope the display of US power will
force other countries, such as North Korea, to respond to multilateral
efforts to change their ways.

And yet the critical question is: what happens if this pressure fails?
Another way of looking at this is to ponder what may be beyond the immediate
capacity of the US to control. The US may not be seeking a fight with
governments in the Middle East but it may get one all the same. Perhaps the
most obvious example is the risk, during a US occupation of Iraq, of
terrorist activity against American forces. What happens if a Syrian- or
Iranian-sponsored and based terrorist group launches a strike against US
units?

Whatever the domestic or international preoccupations, the Bush
administration would almost certainly feel obliged to pursue those
governments and the logic of its policy suggests military action would be
the option of choice.

This represents the opportunity as well as the challenge of the new world
America is creating with its success in Iraq. There is not much doubt now
that the war there was about a lot more than dealing with the direct threat
of weapons of mass destruction. It was the defining moment in the post-cold
war world. Indeed, it probably ended the first, uncertain phase of that era.
The US is now intent on spreading the ambit of liberal democracy into
regions where it will challenge aggressively unstable regimes.

This dramatically new imperialism is pushing American frontiers way beyond
the country's traditional borders and it will inevitably create new
challenges for the US that will require their own responses, whatever
American intentions may be now.

Mr Woolsey may have captured the defining mood of the new era in his recent
speech: "As we move towards a new Middle East, over the years, I think, over
the decades to come, we will make a lot of people very nervous."


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2947571.stm

*  US WARNED OVER SYRIA STANCE
BBC, 15th April

I would say that we have seen chemical weapons tests in Syria over the past
12, 15 months
Donald Rumsfeld
US Defence Secretary

Arab countries have joined Russia and the European Union in criticising the
United States for making threats against Syria over the war in Iraq.

The US said it might impose economic, diplomatic and other unspecified
sanctions against Damascus if President Bashar al-Assad failed to take what
it called the right decisions.

The Secretary General of the Arab League, Amr Musa, said he was astounded by
the threats and an Egyptian spokesman warned against what he called the
targeting of Arab countries one by one.

Earlier, Russia and the European Union urged the US to show restraint in its
dealings with Syria, which is accused of developing chemical weapons and
helping fugitive Iraqi officials.

Syria has strongly denied the US allegations.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has already expressed concern that recent
statements about Syria may further destabilise the Middle East.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell, said there was a new situation in the
Middle East following the removal of Saddam Hussein, and he hoped all
nations in the region would review their past behaviour.

The Americans say Syria is a "terrorist state" - it is included on the US
State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism.

But Russia says the US statements can only aggravate the situation and
complicate a post war settlement in Iraq.

The Russian views were echoed by the French Foreign Minister, Dominique de
Villepin, who said dialogue was essential.

And the European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, urged the US
to tone down its statements about Syria, saying it was time to reduce the
tension.

At the White House, the presidential spokesman, Ari Fleischer, repeatedly
dodged the question of whether Syria might be next for US military action -
intentional ambiguity clearly designed to put the frighteners on Damascus,
says the BBC's Rob Watson.

And US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Syria had carried out chemical
weapons tests in the past 12 to 15 months.

UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw denied suggestions that Syria was "next on
the list" to be targeted, but stressed it had to answer some "important
questions".

A Syrian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Bouthana Shaaban, insisted that "the
only country in the region which has chemical, biological and nuclear
weapons is Israel".

And the fact that a senior Iraqi official had been found near the
Iraqi-Syrian border was "evidence that Syria didn't let him in, and didn't
let any member of the family in or anybody of the regime in," she told the
BBC.

"We never had friendly relations with them and certainly none of them even
applied to come to Syria," she said.

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair told Parliament he had received an assurance
from Syrian President Assad that no fleeing Iraqi officials would be allowed
into Syria.

But according to a top Iraqi general who switched sides during the war,
Syria has given refuge to members of Saddam Hussein's regime.

General Ali al-Jajjawi - former Republican Guard commander in the northern
city of Mosul - said Saddam's Baath Party deputy Izzat Ibrahim and other top
figures had fled to Syria shortly before the city fell last Friday.

Ties between the US and Syria have long been strained by US support for
Israel and Syria's backing of the Lebanese group Hezbollah and radical
Palestinian groups, which Washington considers "terrorist".

The US has also repeatedly accused Syria of the "hostile act" of supplying
Iraq with night vision goggles and other military equipment.

US intelligence has long suspected Syria of having a well-developed chemical
weapons programme as well as long-range missiles.

Some US experts believe Syria's programme started in earnest after clashes
with Israel in 1982, with two chemical weapons plants established by 1984 to
produce significant amounts of nerve gases such as Sarin and VX.


http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny
vphal163222400apr16,0,4919704.story?coll=ny%2Dviewpoints%2Dheadlines

*  SYRIA, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, HAS TO BE NEXT
by Yossi Klein Halevi
Newsday, 16th April

Yossi Klein Halevi is the Israel correspondent for the New Republic. This is
from the Los Angeles Times.

Though Syria was conspicuously omitted from President George W. Bush's "axis
of evil," the regime of Bashar Assad has now replaced Saddam Hussein as the
Arab world's leading supporter of terrorism and stockpiler of weapons of
mass destruction.

Syria is the only Arab country that actively backed Hussein, reportedly
encouraging suicide bombers to cross into Iraq, sheltering Iraqi war
fugitives and possibly storing nonconventional weapons for Hussein.

By focusing on those provocations, the Bush administration is correcting a
serious flaw in its war against terrorism. The region's most vicious
terrorist groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, maintain operational
centers in Damascus. As one administration insider put it, any taxi driver
in the Syrian capital knows the address of half a dozen terrorist groups.

Worse, Syria arms and protects the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah. Until
Sept. 11, Hezbollah held the world record in the number of Americans killed
through terrorism. In two suicide bombings in the 1980s, Hezbollah murdered
260 American servicemen stationed in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.

No terror organization maintains greater global reach than Hezbollah, whose
cells and fund raising network extend to six continents. Deputy Secretary of
State Richard Armitage recently noted that Hezbollah "may be the
[terrorists'] A-team, while al-Qaida may be actually the B-team."

Syria's support for Hezbollah endangers the entire Mideast. Since Israel's
withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, Hezbollah has reportedly placed up to
10,000 Iranian-supplied missiles along the Israeli border. Those missiles,
capable of reaching every town and industrial center in the Galilee, were
delivered through the Syrian army, which controls Lebanon. If another
regional Arab-Israeli war occurs, the probable trigger won't be Palestinian
terrorism but Hezbollah's missiles.

While Bashar Assad's father, the late Syrian dictator Hafez Assad,
maintained tight control over Hezbollah and saw it as an expedient tool to
be wielded with caution, the son has embraced Hezbollah's romantic
self-image as the Arab avant-garde. Hezbollah, he has said, is a "ray of
light" for the Arab world. The "historic relations" between Syria and
Hezbollah, he said shortly after the Israeli withdrawal, "will be much
stronger and more effective than they were in the past." That is one promise
the young Assad has faithfully kept.

It wasn't supposed to happen this way.

When Bashar Assad inherited his father's regime three years ago, much was
made in the international media about the new leader's Western education and
affinity for the Internet. Some even breathlessly reported that he was a
Phil Collins fan. But Assad quickly proved that he was his father's son by
suppressing a reformist movement and arresting Syrian dissidents who had
written an open letter to him demanding democracy.

With Hussein gone, Bashar Assad is now the Arab world's leading rejectionist
of peace with Israel. He recently asserted that Israel's legitimacy would
never be accepted by the Arab world.

Syria has opposed every Mideast breakthrough, from the Israeli-Egyptian
peace treaty to the Oslo process. And now Syria is taking on the United
States.

The mufti of Damascus, Syria's highest-ranking religious leader, recently
urged Muslims to attack American troops in Iraq. As a government employee in
a police state, he would never have issued that call without Assad's tacit
approval.

After years of Syrian provocation, Washington is finally responding. The
Bush administration is demanding that Syria surrender Hussein's
nonconventional weapons - if it has them - and stop providing asylum to his
henchmen. The administration is also calling attention to Syria's own
stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and its support for terrorist
groups.

But Washington needs to go further: It should demand that Syria end its
occupation of Lebanon, permit Beirut to disarm Hezbollah and assert control
over its own country.

An American invasion of Syria most likely will not be necessary to produce
results. Unlike Hussein, Bashar Assad has shown that he can be pressured.
When the Turks threatened to invade Syria unless he handed over the Kurdish
terrorist leader Abdullah Ocalan, Assad quickly obliged.

If the United States is serious about uprooting terrorism, it cannot stop
with its victory in Iraq. The jihadist war against the West has been
actively nurtured by several key Mideast regimes.

Focusing on Damascus is the inevitable next step of the counteroffensive
that began on Sept. 12, 2001.


VICTORS' JUSTICE

http://www.dawn.com/2003/04/12/top15.htm

*  US ISSUES LIST OF 55 IRAQI LEADERS FOR ARREST OR KILLING
Dawn, 12th April

WASHINGTON, April 11: The United States announced on Friday a most-wanted
list of former Iraqi leaders who, Washington says "must be brought to
justice."

The list includes 55 members of the Saddam government whose names along with
their pictures have been printed on posters and playing cards and are being
distributed across Iraq.

All on this list would be "pursued, killed or captured," says a statement
issued by the US Central Command.

The list has also been given to coalition soldiers in Iraq in several forms,
including the flip deck of playing cards with an image of the person's face
and job description of each official "to ease identification when contact
does occur," the announcement said.

Coalition forces are also hanging posters and distributing handbills
throughout Iraq to "to help the coalition gain information from the Iraqi
people so that they also know exactly who it is we seek," the Central
Command said.

Some on the list may have already been killed or captured, the announcement
said. Meanwhile, at the Friday morning briefing, Pentagon officials told
reporters in Washington that Iraqi forces are putting up "a spirited
defence" for Tikrit, the homeland of President Saddam Hussein, which is also
a stronghold of the former ruling Baath Party.

[.....]


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/a/2003/04/12/MN269293
.DTL

*  FIRST CAME KHAN, NOW BUSH
by Michael Kohn, Chronicle Foreign Service
San Francisco Chronicle, 12th April

Ulan Bator, Mongolia -- When it comes to fighting a war in Iraq, the United
States and its most famous predecessors -- the Mongols of the 13th century
-- have a lot in common. Both the Mongols and the Bushes, for instance,
attacked Iraq twice.

Saddam Hussein vilified the Americans who attacked his country as the "new
Mongols." And it was not the first time the Iraqi leader had compared U.S.
invaders to the Mongol hordes. In 1991, he likened former President George
Bush to Hulegu Khan, the warlord grandson of Genghis Khan, who sacked
Baghdad in 1258.

But in some ways, the American-led attack doesn't hold a candle to the
Mongols' assault.

The Mongolian version of "shock and awe" so devastated Baghdad that the city
was left unrecognizable. Homes and mosques were razed and between 200,000
and 800,000 people were killed. The war's chroniclers said the Tigris River
ran red with blood and then black from ink after the barbarians threw the
Caliph of Baghdad's library into the river.

The Mongolian generals struck such terror into the hearts of the Iraqis that
the caliph not only agreed to hand over all his riches but 700 princesses as
well, in exchange for his life. The Mongols, however, ignored the offer,
rolling the ruler of Baghdad into a carpet and trampling him to death with
horses.

After their military victory, the Mongols spent 17 days looting Baghdad. Now
the city is being looted again, but this time it is not the conquerors but
the conquered who are doing the pillaging.

Still, there are some obvious similarities in the two campaigns. Both
invading forces used superior military technology to their advantage. The
Americans, of course, have smart bombs and bunker busters. For the Mongols,
it was a skilled cavalry and catapults that hurled rocks and burning oil.

In 1258, news of the capital's destruction led to the easy capture of towns
and villages such as Hilla, Kufa and Basra, just as Baghdad's fall led to
the rapid capitulation of forces defending Kirkuk and Mosul.

Both war machines also relied on allies, though the Mongols put together a
more impressive coalition, with Uzbeks, Kazaks, Georgians and other groups
joining in the assault.

Mongolian historian Shagdaryn Bira suggests that ideological differences
helped fuel both wars.

"Mongolia's nomadic and shamanic culture came into conflict with the values
of Islamic peoples. The U.S. is a product of Christian and European values
that also found conflict in Iraq," he said. "I am not saying that the
Mongols or the U.S. purposely pursued a holy war, but the lack of common
values led to war rather than compromise."

Bira also contends that both superpowers were attracted by Iraq's riches.

"Of course, the Mongols had an economic interest. They were nomadic and
produced little, so the treasures of Persia were tempting," he said, "just
as the lure of oil tempts the United States."

Yet Bira and other academics agree that there are some stark differences
between the campaigns.

The Mongols captured Baghdad in a mere four days, for instance, while it
took U.S. forces three weeks.

Perhaps the most striking difference in the two conflicts is that the
Mongols not only brought down the Arab culture's most prosperous city but
destroyed a 500-year-old dynasty. At its peak, the Abbasid caliphs, who
ruled from 750 to 1258, claimed lands stretching from Central Asia in the
east to North Africa and Spain in the west. That far eclipsed the territory
ruled by Hussein's Baath Party, which came to power 40 years ago and has
suffered two failed wars in Iran and Kuwait.

On the other hand, both the invading Mongol and U.S. armies were warmly
welcomed by Iraqis who had been abused by their rulers. While Muslims saw
the Mongols as invaders, Iraqi Christians considered Hulegu Khan to be a
liberator, just as the Kurds and Shiites see U.S. and British troops.

"Throughout its supremacy, like an insatiable leech, (Baghdad) had swallowed
up the entire world," wrote the Armenian chronicler, Kirakos of Ganja. "Now
it restored all that had been taken. It was punished for the blood it had
shed and the evil it had done."

Yet the beneficence shown to the Christians did little to change the world's
impression of the Mongols. Like the Americans, they were loathed in the Arab
world.

And what do modern Mongols think of the war in Iraq?

The Mongolian government supports Washington and has joined the "coalition
of the willing." It has even offered to send troops to help protect mosques
and historical places when the conflict ends.

And though Mongolia's army has greatly fallen from its Genghis Khan glory
days, the country still prides itself on its medieval legacy of conquest.
Each summer, nomads on horseback ride to the steppes to compete in
wrestling, horse racing and archery.


http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Articles.asp?Article=49069&Sn=WORL

*  QUSAY SEEN FLEEING AFTER BLITZ ON BUILDING
Gulf Daily News (The Voice of Bahrain), 13th April

Residents of a Baghdad suburb said yesterday they saw Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein's younger son Qusay alive shortly after US bombs flattened a
building where US officials had tried to kill Saddam and his sons.

On Monday, a B-1 bomber dropped four 900kg bombs on the building in the
Mansur district after the CIA received a tip that Saddam and sons Qusay and
Uday were inside.

The strike demolished the building but US and British officials said they
suspected Saddam might have got away.

A Reuters correspondent visited the upscale Mansur district yesterday, the
first time an unsupervised visit had been possible since censorship
collapsed with Saddam's rule on Wednesday.

Only yesterday morning did foreign Arab fighters who had continued to resist
US forces pull out of the area.

Among people living across the street from the bombed building, one
middle-aged couple said they both saw Qusay, Saddam's heir-apparent, driven
away in a government-issue Peugeot 306 car about 15 minutes after the
bombing.

The couple, who had seen Qusay in the flesh before, said they had rushed out
of their villa after the blast to inspect damage. Their garden remained
littered with rubble.

They said Qusay was sitting in the passenger seat of the car.

"I am positive it was him (Qusay). He was sitting in the pasenger seat, the
AK-47 was in his lap," the man, an Iraqi professional, said.

"A degree of fear will always rule us as long as they (Saddam and his
family) are out there," he added.

The whole street had been swarming with Saddam's special security guards
before the explosions, they said.

The man, speaking on condition of anonymity, said some of his relatives
believed they had seen Saddam himself at around the same time a few streets
away.

US intelligence officials sounded confident that they had at least been
close to hitting Saddam.

The area was known to have been frequented by Saddam and other members of
the Iraqi elite.

The whereabouts of Saddam and his sons remain a mystery. A US official said
Washington was leaning slightly more towards the view that Saddam was dead.


http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Articles.asp?Article=49078&Sn=WORL

*  TOP SADDAM AIDE SURRENDERS
Gulf Daily News (The Voice of Bahrain), 13th April

BAGHDAD: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's top weapons adviser insisted while
surrendering to US troops here yesterday that he was ready for questioning
because the ousted regime did not have arms of mass destruction.

General Amer Al Saadi, a rockets specialist and Saddam's chief weapons
adviser, told German ZDF public television that he had remained in his
Baghdad home even after US-led forces entered the Iraqi capital last
Wednesday and that he decided to give himself up because he felt "in no way
guilty".

ZDF showed Al Saadi wearing a mustard shirt and black trousers while
speaking to his German wife, Helma, his brother and his nephew in the garden
of his home in an undisclosed location in the capital.

Then he sat in the back seat of the ZDF van next to the journalist who was
interviewing him along the way.

Al Saadi was seen stepping down from the vehicle near a public bath on Abu
Nawas avenue which travels along the eastern bank of the Tigris river, on
the opposite side of the US controlled Republic Palace of Saddam Hussein.

He shook hands with the US troops who told him that he could take along his
wife, but he insisted on going alone.

He kissed his wife on the cheek before sitting in the passenger seat of a US
military truck that took off to an undisclosed location.

Saadi, an avid tennis player, was carrying only a small sports bag.

A ZDF statement said Al Saadi declared that he had no information on the
whereabouts of Saddam.


http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/14/1050172488487.html

*  SADDAM'S HALF-BROTHER CAPTURED BY COALITION
Sydney Morning Herald, from AFP, 14th April

Coalition forces have captured Saddam Hussein's half-brother Watban near the
border with Syria, Kurdish TV said.

"Watban Ibrahim Hasan, Saddam's half-brother who served as interior minister
and in other sensitive positions, was captured today by coalition forces in
Rabia," north-west of Mosul and close to the border with Syria, said KTV,
which is run by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Massoud Barzani.

The wording of the news implied that Watban, who also held a state security
post in the past, had been attempting to flee to Syria.

Another half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, was killed on Friday morning in US
bombing of his farm in the region of Ramadi west of Baghdad, a family friend
told AFP.

Both Watban and Barzan, who are full brothers, figure on the list of the 55
most-wanted Iraqi leaders issued by the US Defence Department on Friday, two
days after the capture of Baghdad by US forces put an end to Saddam's
24-year rule.

Barzan is named on the list as "Barzan Ibrahim Hasan", and he and Watban are
each identified as "presidential adviser and Saddam half-brother".


http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/14/1050172550260.html

* SAS PATROL APPREHENDS SENIOR IRAQI MILITARY STAFF
by Tom Allard
Sydney Morning Herald, 15th April

An Australian Special Air Service patrol apprehended a convoy of senior
Iraqi military figures in western Iraq attempting to escape US retribution.

Carrying $US600,000 ($1 million) in cash and letters saying "death to
America", the 59 Iraqi military personnel were taken into custody on Friday.

"This could be a very interesting find. There were members of the military
heirarchy among them," said Lieutenant-Colonel Mark Elliott, the Australian
military spokesman at coalition central command in Doha, Qatar.

"We can't say if any of them are the 55 leading figures the Americans are
putting on the deck of cards. Investigations are ongoing."

Only two in the "deck" have been located so far - Saddam's half brother,
Watban Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, No 51 on the list - was taken into
coalition custody on Sunday. Watban's full brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, was
killed in a US bombing of his farm, west of Baghdad.

Other notable detainees not on the top-55 list include chief scientific
adviser, Amir Saadi, who turned himself in to US forces with a German
television crew on hand, and Jaffar al Jaffar, a top nuclear scientist.

The capture by the SAS did not involve an exchange of fire.

It's the most substantial find yet for the SAS in their new role patrolling
the roads leading from Baghdad to Syria and Jordan.

The SAS specialise in long-range reconnaissance, using customised long-range
vehicles and operating in teams of six or seven. There are 150 SAS deployed
in Iraq.

The SAS have also been searching for Arab volunteers seeking to cross into
Iraq to join any resistance.

Earlier in the conflict, the SAS were directed to find missile sites capable
of firing weapons at Israel, caches of WMD and destroying other "sensitive
sites".




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