Date:11/04/2003 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2003/04/11/stories/2003041103021400.htm

International

Where is Saddam Hussein?

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

Washington APRIL 10. In the midst of the all the goings-on in and around Baghdad and in the excitement here and overseas on the "fall" of the Saddam Hussein regime, the big question remains unanswered: Where is Saddam Hussein?

The rapid developments of Monday did not stop the rumour mills and American intelligence agencies were racing against time to scotch one rumour after another, with some help from senior members of the Bush administration like the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld.

There are at least four stories doing the rounds, each with its own group of supporters and sceptics: Mr. Hussein is dead and gone along with his sons; the Iraqi leader survived the attack which has killed one of his sons but has managed to move further north to his hometown of Tikrit; Mr. Hussein is in the Russian embassy; and finally, the Iraqi leader and his inner circle have made it to Syria.

The coalition forces have been pounding Tikrit for quite sometime but this stronghold of the Saddam Hussein clan has not been secured.

The United States-led forces have started targeting the Iraqi leader's hometown in a major way, from the air especially lending some credence to the fact that perhaps the Iraqi leader may have escaped from Baghdad.

For the record, administration and intelligence officials are saying that it could take days before anything definitive is said whether Mr. Hussein survived those two bunker busters and two 2,000-pound GBU 31s.

In the immediate aftermath of the bombing by the B-1B aircraft, U.S. authorities could not get anywhere near the site because its forces were nowhere around the place.

Now, the talk is of the evidence scene having been tampered with. British newspapers have reported that Mr. Hussein could be alive, even if injured; and one speculation is that he might not have been in the building that was targeted.

But American intelligence officials dispute this theory with one intelligence operative in Baghdad at the time of the bombing saying that he had seen Mr. Hussein entering the building "with his own eyes''.

About the only flat out assertion on Mr. Hussein's whereabouts came from Mr. Rumsfeld, who shot down the notion that the Iraqi leader could have fled to Syria — he argued that there were "intelligence scraps'' about members of Saddam Hussein's family and supporters fleeing to Syria but these were not "very senior, senior people''.

He argued that it is difficult to find a single person. "It's hard to find them when they're alive and mobile.

It's hard to find them when they're not well. And it's hard to find them when they're buried under rubble. We don't know'', the Defence Secretary maintained at the Pentagon.

That would leave one with the last question: Is Mr. Hussein holed up in the Russian embassy in Baghdad on his way to being spirited out of the country? And much of speculation on this had to do with what the Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament had to say — why did the Russian ambassador return to Baghdad after leading a convoy out to the Syrian border; and what was the U.S. National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, doing in Moscow?

For the official record, the Russian ambassador returned to take back a wounded embassy driver who had been left behind in an Iraqi hospital when the convoy came under fire. And Dr. Rice was in Moscow to meet the Russian President for a "wide-ranging discussion'' on bilateral ties.

One perception is that a deal of sorts had been struck between the U.S. and Russia — that Mr. Hussein and a limited entourage would be allowed "safe passage'' if the Republican Guards dropped all resistance.