Saddam loyalist link with Islamists still vague

IRAQ: While the US has been claiming for months that Saddam loyalists and foreign fighters are co-operating to mount attacks on occupation targets in Iraq, Washington has previously offered no hard evidence of such a connection.

The US defence official who spoke of the link between Mr Ibrahim and al-Ansar could not say whether either was responsible for last Monday's blitz in Baghdad or define the extent of the co-operation between him and the Islamist group.

Before the war Ansar al-Islam, a group formed by Kurdish Islamist militants, set up a base in the hills of the US-protected Kurdish "safe haven." During the offensive US forces and their Kurdish allies attacked the Ansar base and drove the militants across the border into Iran. After investigating the base, US officials alleged the group was attempting to make crude chemical and biological weapons.

Al-Ansar fighters and members of other Islamist factions later infiltrated back into Iraq and went underground.

Number six on the 55-member US list of most wanted Iraqis, Mr Ibrahim, vice-chairman of the ruling Revolutionary Council and deputy head of the armed forces, was one of Saddam's most trusted aides.

Mr Ibrahim's daughter was married briefly to Saddam's eldest son, Uday. He was one of the key figures in the plot that brought the Baath Party to power in 1968 and belonged to the faction comprising men from the town of Tikrit, Saddam's power base.

For many years Mr Ibrahim exercised responsibility for northern Iraq and was appointed military commander for the area ahead of the war. He had close ties with the regular army and the Saddam Fedayeen militia. Earlier this month, US troops claimed to have captured a top associate of Mr Ibrahim in the town of Baqouba north of Baghdad.

A report contradicting the Pentagon leak about Mr Ibrahim has, however, appeared in a Baghdad paper, al-Yawm al-Akhar, which claimed that for several weeks Mr Ibrahim has been negotiating his surrender with US forces.

The paper said he was prepared to turn himself in on condition that he would not be extradited to Kuwait, where he could be prosecuted for involvement in the 1990 Iraqi invasion.

The paper said Mr Ibrahim was prepared to surrender because he is in need of treatment for leukaemia.