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Aziz saw Saddam after strikes
29/04/2003 08:26 - (SA)
Washington - Iraq's former deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz told his US captors that Saddam Hussein is alive, or at least he was alive in early April, a US official said on Monday.
"Tareq is talking, we don't know how much, we don't know how accurate, but he did say Saddam was alive as of April, the earlier part of April," the official said.
Aziz, the highest profile member of Iraq's ousted regime to fall into US hands so far, surrendered to coalition forces overnight on Thursday.
A senior Pentagon official told USA Today newspaper Monday that Aziz told US interrogators he saw Saddam Hussein alive after two coalition air strikes intended to kill him on March 20 and April 7.
General Tommy Franks, the commander of US forces in Iraq, said in Abu Dhabi on Sunday that he had seen no evidence recently to convince him that the deposed Iraqi president was still alive.
He said Aziz was being "cooperative and talkative" under interrogation, although he added: "What we don't know is the veracity of it."
As the English-speaking foreign minister during the 1991 Gulf War, Aziz became the public face of Saddam's Iraq, but was not seen as part of Saddam's inner circle.
On March 20 and April 7, US forces used cruise missiles and bunker-busting bombs against two locations in Baghdad where intelligence indicated Saddam was meeting with his top associates. - Sapa-AFP
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