Senior Iraqi offical handed to US

ALLIED forces were yesterday holding a commander of the Baghdad Ba’ath Party after he was handed over by Iraqi Kurds.

Samir al-Aziz al-Najim is the highest ranking figure on the coalition’s “most wanted” list to be caught so far.

As the 24th most wanted member of Saddam Hussein’s regime he was more highly prized than the Iraqi dictator’s two half-brothers, who were captured in recent days.

Al-Najim’s face features on the four of clubs in a deck of cards issued to allied troops, which shows the 55 people on the list. He was the regional command chairman for the Ba’ath Party in east Baghdad and a member of the party’s central command.

He was caught by Kurds near the northern city of Mosul and they gave him to a US special forces team.

Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, at Allied Central Command in Qatar, said yesterday: “Special operation forces last night captured another key member of the regime, Samir al-Aziz al-Najim, one of the top 55 members of the regime”.

“He was a Ba’ath Party official, a regional command chairman for the Baghdad district, and is believed to have first-hand knowledge of the Ba’ath Party central structure,” General Brooks said.

“All those people on that list of 55 have information on the inner workings of the regime that relates to weapons of mass destruction, that relates to terrorism.

“He was an insider, he had the Baghdad district, and there are indications he was posted into the north to take over military operations.”

If Al-Najim was indeed sent to control Saddam’s armies in the north it would explain why he was replaced as oil minister without public explanation earlier this year.

He was a member of the Ba’ath Party’s highest decision-making body and, before becoming oil minister, was Saddam’s chief of staff following the Gulf War.

In Iraq, pockets of sporadic fighting were still continuing.

General Brooks said an armoured unit from the US 4th Infantry Division took more than 30 prisoners and destroyed eight vehicles in a fight with paramilitaries north of Baghdad.

The attack was launched after an unmanned drone spotted the paramilitaries loading ammunition into pickup trucks. In Baghdad, there were some incidents of anti-US chanting after prayers yesterday.

One cleric attacked the US “occupation” in his sermon and called on them to leave, saying: “Get out before we force you out.”

In Iran, the exiled leader of the biggest Iraqi opposition group called on Iraqis to converge in the Shi’ite holy city of Karbala to oppose a US-led interim administration.

Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, said: “I call on Iraqis to converge in Karbala to oppose any sort of foreign domination and support establishment of an Iraqi government that protects freedom, independence and justice for all Iraqis.”

Near Kirkuk in northern, Iraq up to 2,000 unmarked graves were still being examined. They are believed to be the remains of some of the thousands of Kurds who disappeared during Saddam’s reign of terror.

Meanwhile, the chief UN arms inspector said his team is ready to get back into Iraq to carry on the job of looking for weapons of mass destruction.

Using strong language, Dr Hans Blix said he would not want to work under a new US-led disarmament effort in Iraq.

“We’re not dogs on a leash,” he said.

“We have a mandate from the Security Council and credibility requires that we have independent judgment,” he added.