THE former US attorney general, Mr Ramsey Clark, supports Iraq and President Saddam Hussein in their fight against UN trade sanctions crippling the country, according to reports in yesterday's Baghdad newspapers.
The reports said Mr Clark, attorney general from 1967 to 1969, had a meeting with the President on Sunday during which he expressed "happiness to visit Iraq and meet the President".
Photographs of Mr Clark and Mr Saddam were on the front pages of the state run newspapers as well as Babel newspaper, owned by Mr Saddam's eldest son, Uday.
It was the Iraqi leader's first public appearance since tribesmen killed a senior defector, Gen Hussein Kamel Hassan, his two brothers and father last Friday, just three days after the defector returned to Iraq from Jordan.
According to the newspapers, Mr Clark pledged to Mr Saddam that "he would continue his work and struggle... for lifting the unjust embargo on the Iraqi people".
Mr Clark, who has made repeated visits to Iraq since the 1990 Gulf crisis over Kuwait, was taken on tours of Iraq's southern provinces, hardest hit under devastating UN trade sanctions imposed for the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
In an interview with the government newspaper al Jumhouriya, Mr Clark heaped praise on Mr Saddam, who he said was endowed with "the power and will enabling him to take Iraq to a bright future".
He described the UN trade sanctions on Iraq as "an act of sabotage and crime since they deny food and medicine to a whole nation".
Mr Clark left Baghdad yesterday and was not available for comment.
Meanwhile, Iraq is to send technicians to Turkey to explore ways of repairing its twin pipeline through Turkish territory, Baghdad diplomats said yesterday. The team was expected to leave soon, pending a review of the outcome of the first round of Iraq's talks with the United Nations in New York on limited sales of Iraqi oil.
Iraq's pipeline network was a key target for allied bombing during the 1991 Gulf War. The twin 1,049km Kirkuk Yumurtalik line has a maximum capacity of two million barrels a day.