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US forces âturn down Sahhafâs surrender overturesâ
Iraq's former information minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf, who denied to the end the presence of US forces in Baghdad, was turned down by US troops after trying to turn himself in, said the London-based Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, citing a Kurdish official. Sahhaf had been at his aunt's house in Baghdad for the past four days and wanted US troops to arrest him so that "they can protect him" but they refused since he was not on their "most wanted" deck of playing cards, said the paper, citing Adel Murad of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Mr Murad said Sahhaf was in Mosul before going to Baghdad and that some PUK partisans saw him in the northern city and that he even asked some of them to intervene on his behalf with US troops, but "we told him that we didn't want to be party to this matter", the paper added. The Kurdish official told the paper that US troops regularly patrolled near Sahhaf's hideout on Palestine Street in the Iraqi capital and that he sent some of his relatives to inform them of his wish to surrender, but they turned him down. "Negotiations are still going on to hand him over to them," said Mr Murad. "Please arrest me, I miss the spotlight!"
Posted by: Steve 2003-04-29 |
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| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=13631 |