Massive Protest in Baghdad against US Occupation of Iraq
By Hassan Hafidh BAGHDAD

Tens of thousands of protesters demanded on Friday that the United States get out of Iraq and U.S. troops arrested a fourth wanted aide of Saddam Hussein.

Demonstrators poured out of Friday prayers in Baghdad mosques chanting anti-American slogans and calling for an Islamic state to replace Saddam’s toppled government.

The protests on the Muslim holy day came as regional states met in Saudi Arabia to discuss a response to the Iraq war.

U.S. Central Command in Qatar said Iraqi Kurds had captured and handed over Samir Abul Aziz al-Najim, a senior Baghdad official of Saddam’s Baath Party, near Mosul in northern Iraq.

He was the fourth person to be detained from a U.S. list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis. U.S. Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told a news briefing Najim may have been posted to northern Iraq to take command of some military operations there.

Abu Dhabi television, meanwhile, aired footage said to show Saddam and his son Qusay addressing a crowd in Baghdad from the top of a car on April 9 — the day the city fell.

In the first Friday prayers since U.S. tanks drove to the heart of Baghdad last week, a Muslim preacher said the United States had invaded to defend Israel and denied Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, a key justification Washington offered for the war.

No prayers were held last Friday. Followers of the preacher, Ahmed al-Kubaisi, carried Korans and waved banners that read “No to America. No to Secular State. Yes to Islamic State.”

“Leave our country, we want peace,” one banner read.

“This is not the America we know. The America we know respects international law, respects the right of people,” Kubaisi said.

He said Iraqis had been betrayed by Saddam, who has disappeared along with most of his aides. “Saddam was the one who betrayed his people and ignored them and escaped,” he said.

SUNNIS, SHI’ITES UNITE

Organizers of Friday’s demonstration called themselves the Iraqi National United Movement and said they represented both Iraq’s majority Shi’ite Muslims and powerful Sunnis.

The protest served notice of the hostility that the United States, which has appointed a retired American general to lead an interim administration in Iraq, is likely to face from sectors of the influential Muslim clergy.

In Qatar, Brooks said that, now Saddam was gone, Iraqis had the right to demonstrate. “We want the governance of Iraq to be handed over to, passed over to the Iraqi people as quickly as we can,” he added.

The three other leading Iraqis held by U.S. forces are Saddam’s half-brothers Barzan and Watban Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti and top scientific adviser Amer Hammoudi al-Saadi.

New television footage of a chanting crowd swarming around Saddam, who has used doubles during his rule, renewed speculation about whether he had survived the barrage of bombs which rained down on the capital from March 20.

Abu Dhabi TV said the pictures were taken on the same day U.S. tanks drove into central Baghdad and Iraqis toppled a massive statue of Saddam, symbolically ending his 24-year rule.

“The bottom line is we don’t know if he’s dead or alive,” said Major Rumi Nielson-Green at U.S. Central Command in Qatar. “It’s really not so important considering he’s not in political power. We know for a fact that he has doubles and people who look like him.”

With shock waves from the stunning U.S. victory still reverberating around the region, eight states met in Riyadh to discuss ties with the future authorities in Baghdad.

The meeting, first such forum on postwar Iraq, was attended by foreign ministers from Turkey, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt and Bahrain as well as host Saudi Arabia.

An opening statement read at the talks criticized what it said were U.S. threats against Syria and called for the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq to be as brief as possible.

SANCTIONS DISPUTE

The United States is now turning its focus to kickstarting Iraq’s shattered economy, hit by three wars in 23 years and economic sanctions since 1991.

U.S. officials told Reuters in Kuwait the United Nations must lift sanctions within weeks to help the country recover, but Washington faces an uphill battle to get them dropped quickly as the issue raises loaded questions over who controls Iraq’s oil and thus who in effect runs the country.

The officials, briefing Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. would open Iraq’s borders to tariff-free trade for 90 days once the embargo is lifted.

They also forecast Iraq could not rely on using its oil revenues for about a year until it sorted out its debt, estimated at more than $100 billion, and war reparation claims.

In a sign that combat operations are over in Baghdad, U.S. Marines said they would begin handing control of their sector of the capital to the U.S. Army on Saturday.

The city is currently divided between Marines, who control the part east of the river Tigris, and Army units occupying the western half, complicating the job of U.S. planners trying to end chaos and restore public services.

Marines see their role as an assault force only and are reluctant to be involved in reconstruction or logistics.

Reuters, Fri April 18, 2003 12:59 PM ET