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US administrator in Baghdad
http://www.sina.com.cn 2003/04/22 11:04  Shanghai Daily

  The retired US Army general appointed as Iraq's postwar administrator arrived in Baghdad yesterday, while two more top members of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime - including his son-in-law - were reported captured.

  Landing at Baghdad's airport in his first postwar visit to the capital, retired Lieutenant General Jay Garner, 64, said his priority was to restore basic services such as water and electricity as soon as possible - a task he said would take intense work.

  From the airport, he visited Baghdad's 1,000-bed Yarmuk hospital, which was overwhelmed with Iraqi casualties in the final days of the war. Its wards, including the coronary and respiratory care units, were then stripped of almost everything by looters.

  "We will help you, but it is going to take time," Garner told doctors.Some were unimpressed.

  "If they give us anything, it is not from their own pockets. It is from our oil," said a female doctor, Iman. "Saddam Hussein was an unjust ruler, but maybe one day we could have got rid of him and not had these foreigners comesintosour country."

  After visiting other sites in the city, Garner went in the late afternoon to the Faw Palace - a grand, yellow stone structure surrounded by a moat -swhereshe was to spend the night.

  With Baghdad slowly returning to normal after days of looting and arson, Marines pulled back on Sunday and left the US Army in control of the capital,swherescoalition-run radio announced an 11 pm-6 am curfew.

  Tensions appeared to ease between the United States and Syria.

  Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa yesterday welcomed US President George W. Bush's positive remarks about Syria, saying his country wants dialogue and not heated exchanges with the United States.

  Al-Sharaa also said Syria has sealed off its border with Iraq and that anyone entering the country would require a visa.

  Al-Sharaa's remarks came a day after Bush applauded signs that Syria is beginning to heed American demands for cooperation against Saddam's defunct regime.

  US Central Command said forces had captured Abd al-Khaliq Abd al-Ghafar, Saddam's scientific research minister, on Saturday - a development that US claimed could shed light on Iraq's nuclear program. Abd al-Ghafar was the four of hearts in the US military's most-wanted deck of cards.

  Also, Saddam's son-in-law and one of Saddam's bodyguards, both hiding in Syria, were persuaded to leave that country and surrendered to members of the opposition Iraqi National Congress in Baghdad, according to a spokesman for the group, Haider Ahmed.

  Jamal Mustafa Abdallah Sultan al-Tikriti is married to Saddam's youngest daughter, Hala, and was deputy head of Iraq's tribal affairs office. He was the nine of clubs in the deck of cards issued to US military to help them recognize regime members.

  He was being questioned by the oppositionsgroupsand will be turned over to US officials, Ahmed said. Central Command had no information on the reported surrender.

  Seven of the 55 most-wanted members of Saddam's regime are now in custody, though none from the very top of the list. An eighth figure, Ali Hassan al-Majid - nicknamed "Chemical Ali" for his use of poison gas against the Kurds - is believed to have been killed in an airstrike.

  As for Saddam itself, Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress exile group, told the BBC yesterday that Saddam is alive in Iraq and is moving from place to place.

  "We are aware of his movements and we are aware of the areas that he has been to, and we learn of this within 12 to 24 hours," he said. "We will work to develop more information about his whereabouts."

  The New York Times reported yesterday that a US military team said a scientist who claimed to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program for more than a decade told them Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment days before the war began.




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