It's al-Reuters, can ya tell?
In an another blow to Iraq's U.S.-backed government, officials retracted a claim to have captured the most wanted Saddam Hussein aide still on the run in Iraq. A day after several Iraqi officials reported the capture of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who was sixth on a U.S. list of the 55 most wanted members of Saddam's regime and had a $10 million price on his head, the government had to make an embarrassing climbdown and say he had not been caught after all. "The person that has been arrested, after appropriate medical tests, was not al-Douri but somebody related to him, who is also wanted by the state," the Interior Ministry said.
The confusion raised questions about the effectiveness and unity of Iraq's interim government as it prepares for national elections in January and tries to crush a stubborn insurgency and tackle a wave of kidnappings. Mustafa Alani, senior consultant at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, said the confusion stemmed from a lack of collective leadership in the government, which is made up of members of several ethnic, religious and political groups. "For Iraqis, it must have a psychologically negative effect on the credibility of the government," he said. |