Deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein reportedly issued a recorded appeal this week urging Iraqis to remain loyal and join the battle against US forces occupying the country, an Australian newspaper reported today.
The Sydney Morning Heraldreported that two men gave an audiotape of the appeal allegedly made by Saddam to its staff in Baghdad after being unable to deliver the recording to Arab correspondents in the city.
In the 15-minute recording, purportedly made on Monday, a "tired-sounding" voice calls on Iraq's people to unite in an underground war against the US-led occupying forces, the newspaper said.
"We have to go back to the secret style of struggle that we began our life with ... your main task is to kick the enemy out from our country," the voice is quoted as saying.
"Through this secret means, I am talking to you from inside Great Iraq and I say to you, the main task for you, Arab and Kurd, Shia and Sunni, Muslim and Christian and the whole Iraqi people of all religions, your main task is to kick the enemy out from our country," it said.
The speaker made several references to the occupation of the country since Saddam's regime was ousted a month ago and accused US forces of looting antiquities from the Iraqi National Museum.
The Sydney Morning Heraldsaid it had played the tape to 13 Iraqis, including a former acquaintance of Saddam and people from his home region of Tikrit, and "the overwhelming opinion was that the voice and rhetoric were very similar, or identical, to those of Saddam".
"Certainly it's him," a judge from a Baghdad criminal court, who asked not to be named, told the newspaper.
"I am 100 per cent certain. I deal with physical evidence all the time," he said. Mr Talib al Shar'aa, a law professor at Baghdad University, said the tape "sounded very realistically like Saddam Hussein".
The newspaper said two men speaking with the accent of the Tikrit region approached its reporters' car - clearly marked "press" - on Monday outside the Palestine Hotel which houses much of the international media in Baghdad.
One man asked for directions to the offices of the al-Jazeera or al-Arabiya television stations, but when told they were inside the hotel he balked at entering the building because it was guarded by US troops.
He then handed the tape to the Australians, saying it had been recorded that morning by Saddam and needed to be released to the Iraqi public and the world.
AFP