War nears end as US takes Saddam’s hometown
With the main fighting apparently over, Washington turned the heat on Iraq’s neighbour, with White House spokesman Ari Fleischer calling Syria a “rogue nation”.
Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld accused Syria of testing chemical weapons within the last 12 to 15 months and of harbouring top associates of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Syria of possible diplomatic or economic sanctions.
US officials stopped short of threatening to extend the Iraq war into Syria but they insisted all options remain open.
Analysts doubted Washington would launch military action, and expect it to use diplomatic pressure to try to persuade Syrian President Bashar al-Assam to change course.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted there “are no plans whatever to invade Syria”.
A stern critic of the Iraq war, Syria denied the US charges and a Syrian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said, “Syria has no chemical weapons and that the only chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in the region are in Israel, which is threatening its neighbours and occupying their land”.
US commanders said the fall of Tikrit, 110 miles (177 kms) north of Baghdad, brought the 26-day-old war to a transition point.
Mr Blair said “we are near the end of the conflict”.
Marines charged into Tikrit at dawn after a fierce overnight aerial bombardment of remnants of the Republican Guard. Resistance was less than expected.
However, there was no sign of the jubilation seen when other Iraqi cities fell.
The whereabouts of Saddam, who was born in a village near Tikrit in 1937, remained unknown.
Brig Gen Vincent Brooks said at the US war headquarters in Qatar there could still be fighting, but that it would not be an “organised regime effort”. US forces now see the main threat as ambushes by irregulars and some foreign volunteers.
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