A rchive Date
[ 13-04-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iraq ]
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[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/Iraq/2003/04/12/63325-ap.html
Saddam's science adviser surrenders
Says Iraq has no banned weapons
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Sat, April 12, 2003
BAGHDAD (AP) - Saddam Hussein's science adviser surrendered to U.S. military authorities Saturday, insisting that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and the U.S.-led invasion was unjustified.
Lt.-Gen. Amer al-Saadi arranged his surrender with the help of Germany's ZDF television network, which filmed him leaving his Baghdad villa with his German wife, Helga, and presenting himself to an American warrant officer, who escorted him away.
Al-Saadi told ZDF that he had no information of what happened to Saddam and repeated his assertion, made often in news conferences before the U.S.-led invasion, that Iraq was free of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
In Doha, Qatar, the U.S. Central Command said it had no information on al-Saadi's reported surrender.
The elegant, British-educated al-Saadi is among 55 regime figures sought by the coalition.
He was among the key figures who worked with UN weapons inspectors and often spoke for the Iraqi government in news conferences between the resumption of inspectors in November and their end last month.
After U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council in February, al-Saadi suggested that monitored Iraqi conversations Powell played were fabricated, that defector informants were unreliable, and that satellite photographs "proved nothing."
Al-Saadi had also defended his government's longtime practice of insisting that Iraqi officials be present during meetings between UN weapons inspectors and Iraqi scientists, saying that otherwise the scientists' remarks might be distorted.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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