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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Saddam Hussein accepted an 11th-hour offer to flee into exile weeks ahead of the U.S.-led 2003 invasion, but Arab League officials scuttled the proposal, officials in this Gulf state claimed. The exile initiative was spearheaded by the late president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, at an emergency Arab summit held in Egypt in February 2003, Sheik Zayed's son said in an interview aired by Al-Arabiya TV during a documentary. The U.S.-led coalition invaded on March 19 that year. A top government official confirmed the offer on Saturday, speaking on...

In a sinister oil-for-murder plot, Saddam Hussein used the scandal-plagued U.N. oil-for-food program to set up the assassination of a prominent Iraqi exile politician, the slain man's family has charged. A mysterious George Tarkhaynan appears on an Iraqi Oil Ministry list, published by a Baghdad newspaper, of 270 politicians and businessmen who received sweetheart oil deals under the U.N. humanitarian program. Safia al-Souhail, a leading political figure in post-Saddam Iraq, told The Post she has evidence that Tarkhaynan is a former Beirut shirtmaker and once-trusted family friend who helped Iraq assassinate her father, anti-Saddam dissident Sheik Taleb al-Souhail al-Tamimi, in...

AMMAN, Jordan - We didn't look much alike, those of us milling about the school courtyard and lining up to vote: Elderly men in traditional Arab gowns, young men in ski jackets and women in bright, flowing robes or beneath long, black abayas. The hodgepodge of dress mirrored the mix of sects, religions and ethnicity_ Shiites, Sunnis, Christians, Kurds, Arabs. But we were all Iraqis and all willing to ignore boycott calls and intimidation attempts to have a say in our future and maybe one day live in the free, democratic, federal and united Iraq touted in election posters. We...

AMMAN (Reuters) - Jubilant Iraqi exiles cast their ballots in a "vote for freedom" on Friday and urged their compatriots in Iraq to defy insurgents and do the same. An Iraqi man shows his right index finger stained with blue ink after his casting his vote in an Amman polling station, January 28, 2005. Iraqis living abroad enthusiastically cast the first ballots in their homeland's landmark election and urged countrymen back home to defy insurgents and vote for democratic Iraq (news - web sites). (Ali Jarekji/Reuters) In the United States, Iraqi expatriates defied frigid temperatures and long trips to the...

A senior Baath party organiser and Saddam Hussein aide, Mohammed Younis al-Ahmed, has been named by western intelligence officials as one of the key figures directing the Sunni insurgency from his hiding-place in neighbouring Syria.Sources have told The Observer that Younis al-Ahmed - who has had a $1 million price tag placed on his head by the US - is one of between 20 and 50 senior Baath party figures based in Syria who, they believe, are involved in organising the guerrilla war against the US-led multi-national forces in Iraq and against the new Iraqi security forces. The naming of...

Sources close to Saddam Hussein's family have said that calls for former Iraqi officials to form a government in exile are gaining ground. The Egyptian international law counsel Hasan Umar told Aljazeera.net he believes that if Ragad Saddam Hussein and former Iraqi officials form a rival government, they would shorten the life of the "Iraqi occupation". “A government in exile would be a threat to the Iraqi interim government of Iyad Allawi that would prevent him from continuing to grant privileges to the US-led occupation forces,” he said. “Many former Iraqi officials are living outside Iraq, and can help in...

AN IRAQI exile who used to demonstrate against Saddam’s regime outside the Iraqi Embassy in London was yesterday confirmed as Baghdad’s new envoy to Britain, restoring diplomatic ties 13 years after they were cut. Salah Shaikhly, a British citizen who was stripped of his Iraqi nationality two decades ago and still has no Iraqi passport, was last night the guest of honour at the annual diplomatic corps dinner hosted by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, for ambassadors and high commissioners to the Court of St James. “I never imagined I would become ambassador,” the 64-year-old British-educated economist told The Times....

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The Iraqi Governing Council chose a longtime anti-Saddam Hussein exile to become prime minister of Iraq's interim government, making the surprise announcement Friday despite U.N. concerns over his ties to the United States and the CIA. The selection of Iyad Allawi - a Shiite Muslim council member who headed an exile group made up of former Saddam military officers - was an assertion of influence by the U.S.-picked body. After apparent initial hesitation, the United States endorsed the choice to head the government due to take power on June 30. A senior Bush administration official in...

NAPLES, Fla. -- A podiatrist who left Iraq 30 years ago said he is closing his Naples practice and returning to his native country to run for the presidency in 2005. Rasool Sharif, 58, said he has traveled to Iraq twice in the last two months. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most respected Shiite cleric, recently asked him to return for more meetings, Sharif said. "I was the only American who has met with him," said Sharif, who opened the Foot & Ankle Clinic in Naples two years ago. Sharif said he is being recruited by the National Alliance of...

AMMAN, Jordan – A long row of battered taxicabs lined a street yesterday in downtown Amman, waiting to carry eager young Iraqi exiles home to battle. Emboldened by news accounts of Islamic militiamen fighting U.S.-led forces, many Iraqis said they were keen to replenish the uprising that has left hundreds of their countrymen and at least 47 coalition troops dead this week. Shiite and Sunni Muslims, age-old rivals, taunted one another about which sect was punishing the Americans more. "You always boast about what's happening in Fallujah," a young Shiite man shouted to a Sunni. "But look what we're doing...

A scientist describes Saddam's weapons and stealth technology programs, reports Russell Skelton. For seven years, before he was tortured and sentenced to death, Rashid (not his real name) worked at the top of Iraq's scientific establishment. He says he regularly met Saddam Hussein and his cousin and strongman deputy prime minister Abdul Tawab Huweish. After the Gulf War he was put in charge of a taskforce code named "Al Babel" to develop stealth technology to make aircraft and missiles undetectable on radar. Rashid, who now lives in Melbourne, also claims to have had access as a trusted insider to secret...

Secret bunkers held chemical weapons, says Iraqi exile April 1, 2004 Print this article Email to a friend A scientist describes Saddam's weapons and stealth technology programs, reports Russell Skelton. For seven years, before he was tortured and sentenced to death, Rashid (not his real name) worked at the top of Iraq's scientific establishment. He says he regularly met Saddam Hussein and his cousin and strongman deputy prime minister Abdul Tawab Huweish. After the Gulf War he was put in charge of a taskforce code named "Al Babel" to develop stealth technology to make aircraft and missiles undetectable on radar....

Secret bunkers held chemical weapons, says Iraqi exile April 1, 2004 A scientist describes Saddam's weapons and stealth technology programs, reports Russell Skelton. For seven years, before he was tortured and sentenced to death, Rashid (not his real name) worked at the top of Iraq's scientific establishment. He says he regularly met Saddam Hussein and his cousin and strongman deputy prime minister Abdul Tawab Huweish. After the Gulf War he was put in charge of a taskforce code named "Al Babel" to develop stealth technology to make aircraft and missiles undetectable on radar. Rashid, who now lives in Melbourne, also...

Shortly after the capture of Saddam Hussein last December, the deposed Iraqi tyrant received a visit in his underground prison cell from a rotund, balding, 59-year-old former banker. Saddam immediately recognised Ahmed Chalabi, one of the leaders of Iraq's new interim administration, and greeted him with a sneer: "So, are you going to be the new ruler of Iraq?" he inquired. Chalabi, who had been taken to Saddam's secret prison cell by US troops to confirm the captured leader's identity, made no reply. "You don't take orders from a dictator and certainly not from a war criminal," he later explained.Nevertheless...

EVERETT -- Ahmed al-Mahana's biggest fear when he returned to Iraq for his first visit in 12 years was not falling victim to a terrorist bombing. It was that his 10-year-old son Ali would not like Iraq. As it turns out, he had nothing to worry about. Ali enjoyed himself so much that when it was time to return to Everett on Feb. 20, he started crying and held onto the stairway railing in his grandparents' home, screaming that he didn't want to leave.

The Associated Press BAGHDAD, Iraq Feb. 21 — Dhia al-Hariri returned to Iraq after decades in exile to reclaim his father's beloved home, only to find Saddam Hussein's regime had turned it into a house of horrors. What was once the backyard is now a dark maze of iron-doored cells. One bedroom has a hook in the ceiling from which interrogators hung prisoners, breaking their arms and giving them electric shocks. "This was my grandmother's bedroom," al-Hariri, 54, said Saturday, standing in a room barren except for the remains of iron bars embedded in the floor where lines of prisoners...

LONDON (AFP) - An Iraqi exile group in London which claims to have supplied Britain with a key piece of intelligence on Iraqi weapons has admitted that the information might have been false. The claim that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was able to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of the order being given was a headline-grabbing assertion in a British government dossier published in September 2002, in the run-up to the Iraq (news - web sites) war. It was also at the heart of a row between the British government and the BBC over allegations...

THANK YOU message to Intelligent Americans from an Iraqi in Exile Hello all. I am an Iraqi Living in exile (EUROPE) and I would like to thank U.S.A for liberating us. As you can see on the video Saddam's mens have pledged many crimes against innocent Iraqis. My message to all the intelligent Americans is: Thank you for your support, and many Iraqis just like me, are very gratefull for the efforts of the AMERICAN TROOPS the real heros that liberated us. The Iraqis that are against the U.S are those that lost many $$$$ because their UNCLE SADDAM has...

BAGHDAD – After a decade of sanctions had left his physics lab a crumbling shell, Raad Mohammed decided it was time to go. In 1999, following a route trodden by thousands of the best and brightest of Iraq's academics, Dr. Mohammed escaped to Jordan without a goodbye to his lifelong colleagues. He was accompanied only by his wife, their suitcases, and handfuls of cash to bribe Mukhabarat agents at the border. He was not alone. An estimated 2,000 professors fled Iraq's 20 major universities between 1995 and 2000, according to news reports at the time. Professors say a thousand or...

Like George W. Bush, the Iraqi writer Kanan Makiya - the man who first drew the world's attention to the extent of Saddam Hussein's crimes in his seminal 1989 book, Republic of Fear - was woken at 5am last Sunday by a phone call from Baghdad. Makiya was in America, where he made his home as a professor at Brandeis University during his long exile, and was staying with his family in Massachusetts when he heard Saddam had been captured. 'I jumped up and woke the kids. We put our arms round each other and for a long time, just...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States plans to set up an Iraqi intelligence service to spy on groups and individuals inside Iraq that are targeting U.S. troops and civilians, The Washington Post reported on Thursday. Citing unidentified U.S. officials, the Post said the CIA plans to set up the new service with help from Jordan. Two members of an Iraqi exile group are at CIA headquarters in Virginia this week to work out details of the new program, the Post said. Iraqi Interior Minister Nouri Badran, a secular Shiite Muslim, has been selected to head the service initially, the Post...

GRADUATION DAY: Despite the US invasion of Iraq and the delay of the school year, these Baghdad University graduates are trying to move forward with their lives. SCOTT PETERSON/GETTY IMAGES from the December 09, 2003 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1209/p01s03-legn.html Iraq's students say, 'Welcome back, professor' By Christina Asquith | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor BAGHDAD - After a decade of sanctions had left his physics lab a crumbling shell, Raad Mohammed decided it was time to go. In 1999, following a route trodden by thousands of the best and brightest of Iraq's academics, Dr. Mohammed escaped to Jordan without a...

<p>BAGHDAD — "Do not think that because you are a woman you will not face the same fate as your father," the voice said to Safia al-Souhail over the phone.</p> <p>Ms. Souhail's father, an exiled opposition leader, was assassinated in Beirut in 1994 by Iraqi agents posing as diplomats.</p>

Rediscovering Iraq Yahia Said 6 - 11 - 2003 Yahia Said, returning to Iraq after a twenty-five year absence, finds a people yearning for freedom, normality – and an end to violence. I could not believe my ears. “I apologise for the inconvenience,” said the Iraqi policeman as he finished searching our car. We were at the checkpoint in front of the Alhamra hotel in Baghdad. Over the past week I had grown accustomed to ‘the rediscovered humanity’, as another policeman put it, of Iraq’s law enforcers. But this was too much. With its policemen behaving like this, it is...

Troops deliver child in Tallil tent city TALLIL AIR BASE, Iraq -- Army Maj. (Dr.) Elizabeth Shanley (right) spends time with the Alrikabi family (left to right) Moslem, Al'aa, Rafah and baby Malach. Shanley, a physician with the 332nd Expeditionary Medical Group, delivered Malach, the first child born here. (U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Lance Cheung) View Larger Download HiRes by Master Sgt. Don Perrien332nd Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs10/31/2003 - TALLIL AIR BASE, Iraq (AFPN) -- The cluster of tents in the corner of tent city here that make up the 332nd Expeditionary Medical Group was bustling with unusual activity...

    Airmen help Iraqi return home BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Khalid Kishtainy steps off a C-130 Hercules at Baghdad International Airport on Oct. 21. Kishtainy is an Iraqi novelist and columnist for the Asharq Al-Awsat Arabic newspaper in London. He was last in Baghdad in 1989 before he left for fear of his life. The former Saddam Hussein regime had two death sentences on Kishtainy for a book he wrote about the regime. The author grew up in Baghdad, and he considers it his hometown. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Scott T. Sturkol) View Larger Download HiRes...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 — An internal assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that most of the information provided by Iraqi defectors who were made available by the Iraqi National Congress was of little or no value, according to federal officials briefed on the arrangement. In addition, several Iraqi defectors introduced to American intelligence agents by the exile organization and its leader, Ahmad Chalabi, invented or exaggerated their credentials as people with direct knowledge of the Iraqi government and its suspected unconventional weapons program, the officials said. The arrangement, paid for with taxpayer funds supplied to the exile group...

WASHINGTON – A former Army intelligence analyst says a number of Iraqi exiles have reported the deposed regime stashed small missiles, weapons and ammunition at mosques in and around Baghdad. U.S. forces have confiscated large caches of weapons in raids of Iraqi homes, but they are barred from raiding religious sites. Guerrilla fighters continue to attack troops with mortars, grenades, homemade explosives and small arms fire on a daily basis. They are tapping into a huge arsenal left behind by the former regime, one that some military officials in Iraq fear could supply fighters for several years. Iraqi exiles from...

Author ArchiveE-mail AuthorSend to a Friend Print Version August 28, 2003, 9:00 a.m.Hating Chalabi, being charmed by “Fidel,” celebrating a glorious couple — and more ne of the vexations and heartaches of the last year or so has been the media's hatred — that's the word for it: hatred — of Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi exile leader — former exile leader, I should say — who is working to give his country a future. This is obviously the man most prepared to provide leadership, yet the media pour disdain on him, in imitation of the State Department and the...

U.S. Moved to Undermine Iraqi Military Before War By DOUGLAS JEHL with DEXTER FILKINS ASHINGTON, Aug. 9 — The United States military, the Central Intelligence Agency and Iraqi exiles began a broad covert effort inside Iraq at least three months before the war to forge alliances with Iraqi military leaders and persuade commanders not to fight, say people involved in the effort. Even after the war began, the Bush administration received word that top officials of the Iraqi government, most prominently the defense minister, Gen. Sultan Hashem Ahmed al-Tai, might be willing to cooperate to bring the war to a...

<p>BAGHDAD--Ahmad Chalabi, my father, is here in Iraq, sitting on the Governing Council of Iraqi nationals that will help ours become a free country. Iraqis from all regions and religions line up daily to meet him at his home. They know his lifelong cause is democracy for all Iraqis, not just a chosen few. To them he is a good man, and an attractive leader.</p>

Veteran politician to return home in SeptemberLondon, Iraq Press, August 3, 2003 – A veteran politician and once key opposition figure to the rule of the deposed leader Saddam Hussein is expected to return home by the middle of September.Saad Saleh Jabr, a former prime minister under the Hashemite Monarchy that ruled Iraq until 1958 told Iraq Press that he was homesick and was looking forward to seeing Baghdad again.Jabr was the first to form an active group in exile to oppose the rule of Saddam Hussein.He founded Umma or the Nation Party in 1982, but dissolved it later and...

Expat scientists set up forum to help colleagues at homeLondon, Iraq Press, August 2, 2003 – Iraqi scientists who fled the terror of the deposed leader Saddam Hussein are anxious to help their counterparts back home.There are an estimated four million Iraqis abroad. They include the cream of the Iraqi intelligentsia.Among them are tens of thousands of university professors, scholars, writers, doctors and engineers.In a fax to Iraq Press, a group led by Assad Khafaji, a nuclear scientist, has decided to establish a forum and issue a special journal to bring the expatriate scientists together. They said their aim was...

Not every part of the Pentagon's war plan to topple Saddam Hussein's regime is winning rave reviews, and one target of ridicule these days is the Defense Department's efforts to mold Iraqi exiles into a viable fighting force. In an initiative that morphed into a cross between a Monty Python sketch and the Keystone Kops, the Pentagon worked with two exile groups with maddeningly similar names, the Free Iraqi Freedom Fighters (FIFF) and the Free Iraqi Forces (FIF). The FIF were Iraqis trained in Hungary by the United States before the war. The Pentagon boasted that it would recruit 3,000...

Tears flowed and long-parted relatives embraced as more than 200 Iraqis set foot in their homeland again after years in exile in neighbouring Saudi Arabia. "I feel like my soul has returned to my body," said Ali Salman, his eyes swimming with tears at the Umm Qasr border crossing. "I can't believe I am actually home and that I will see my family again. I just can't believe it." Like most of the 240 men, women and children who were repatriated on Wednesday by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Mr Salman is a Shiite Muslim who fled to...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - "Republic of Fear," the chilling portrayal of Saddam Hussein's brutality, was a landmark in its exiled author's long intellectual journey of discovery. Now, Kanan Makiya has returned to an Iraq his words helped expose and says he finds it a vexing and complex landscape. Makiya returned to Baghdad on April 21 for the first time in 34 years. He said the return has been an exhilarating ride - meeting long-unseen relatives, old friends, reclaiming the family's Baghdad home on the Tigris River and negotiating access to government documents in now in U.S. hands. The 54-year old...

Saddam is hiding near Baghdad, says exiled spy chief By Patrick Cockburn in Samarra, Iraq 14 July 2003 Saddam Hussein and Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, are hiding in an area of farmland and small villages on the Tigris river between Baghdad and the city of Samarra, says a former senior Iraqi intelligence officer. General Wafiq al-Samarrai, head of Iraqi military intelligence before he went into exile, is assisting American forces in the hunt for Saddam. He said the deposedleader had been able to escape capture because the area was heavily populated and had thick vegetation. "He...

"Comical Ali" leaves Baghdad, might not return DUBAI, July 11 (Reuters) - Former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, who earned the nickname "Comical Ali" during the U.S.-led war on Iraq, made a sudden appearance in Abu Dhabi on Friday, saying he might not return to his homeland. "When I leave I always have in my mind that I might not come down this road again, but I'm working and praying to God that I can return to Baghdad one day," he said on Abu Dhabi Television. Sahaf, 63, became an unlikely media star during the war, winning his stripes...

<p>When Azad Ahmed laid eyes on his former home on Nawab Street for the first time since his family was thrown out of it by Saddam Hussein's regime in 1979, he was overcome with tears of joy.</p> <p>But they quickly gave way to anger at what he found inside: the family of Kerim Ali Khdayer, a 69-year-old former teashop owner.</p>

Shouting "Long live the king," some 1,500 Iraqi tribal sheiks and monarchists welcomed Sharif Ali bin Hussein, a cousin of Iraq's last king who returned to the country Tuesday after spending 45 years in exile. The London investment banker, whose family fled Iraq in 1958 when he was two, flew in by chartered jet and then drove to his family mausoleum that still cradles the remains of two of Iraq's previous kings, Faisal I and Ghazi, AP reported. After visiting the interior of the mausoleum, he spoke to those gathered in the garden behind the mosque-like building crowned by an...

<p>Baghdad -- When nearly 300 Iraqi exiles, tribal leaders and other would-be politicos met Monday with U.S. officials to plan the nation's future, Iraqis watching television saw a different picture -- street protesters yelling at the delegates, angrily criticizing the Americans and demanding justice for a wide range of grievances.</p>

U.S.-Backed Iraqi Exiles Return to Reinvent Nation Sat May 3, 2:58 PM ET Add Top Stories - The New York Times to My Yahoo! By DOUGLAS JEHL The New York Times This article was reported by Danny Hakim, Douglas Jehl and Michael Moss and written by Mr. Jehl. ?/td> Health Agency Took Swift Action Against SARS ?/td> Struggle to Go On After Club Fire ?/td> For the latest breaking news, visit NYTimes.com ?/td> Get DealBook, a daily email digest of corporate finance newsDealBook. Search NYTimes.com: Related Quotes PFEDJIANASDAQ^SPC 31.558582.681502.88930.08 +0.56+128.43+30.32+13.78 delayed 20 mins - disclaimerQuote Data provided by Reuters   ARLINGTON,...

A herd of chocolate-brown water buffaloes snort their way across a corn field followed by their owner, Ahmed Kadhum Na'eem, who 18 days ago transported them on trucks from a farm outside Baghdad in an eight hour journey, the most exciting trip of his life. For the first time in decades his family have been able to return to farm the marshlands which they had lived off for generations but - along with thousands of other Marsh Arabs or Ma'dan - were forced to abandon. From the late 1980s Saddam Hussein drained most of the 4,000 square miles of the...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Splits emerged between Iraqis and returned Iraqi exiles in talks over the U.S. role in an interim government on Monday, delegates at a meeting with the country's American postwar administrator said. Most former exiles wanted a lesser U.S. role, arguing that only Iraqis should rule the country, while those who had not left Iraq (news - web sites) said they wanted more U.S. supervision because they did not trust those who returned after Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s fall. "There are differences over the role of the Americans. We here prefer the Americans to rule us...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. forces on Sunday arrested an Iraqi exile who had proclaimed himself Baghdad's mayor, saying he was exerting authority he didn't have. Mohammed Mohsen al-Zubaidi was arrested at 5 p.m. in downtown Baghdad "for his inability to support the coalition military authority and for exercising authority which was not his," said U.S. military spokesman Capt. David Connolly, speaking in Baghdad. Soldiers arrested seven others found with al-Zubaidi, Connolly said without identifying them. Al-Zubaidi, who has cast himself as a volunteer to help Iraq (news - web sites) get back on its feet, never discouraged widespread rumors that...

WASHINGTON, April 25 — The Pentagon has begun sending a team of Iraqi exiles to Baghdad to be part of a temporary American-led government there, senior administration officials said today. The exiles, most of whom are said by officials to have a background in administration, are supposed to take up positions at each of 23 Iraqi ministries, where they will work closely with American and British officials under Jay Garner, the retired lieutenant general who is serving as Iraq's day-to-day administrator.The group of technocrats was assembled two months ago and has been working from an office in suburban Virginia. From...

ASHINGTON, April 22 — Iranian-trained agents have crossed into southern Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein and are working in the cities of Najaf, Karbala and Basra to promote friendly Shiite clerics and advance Iranian interests, according to defense and other United States government officials. The officials cited intelligence reports that said the agents include members of the military wing of an Iraqi exile group that operates from Iran with that government's training and support. Known as the Badr Brigade, the militia is the armed force of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite group...

AN ayatollah returning to Iraq from Iran after 32 years of exile has been kidnapped along with two busloads of Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims heading for the holy Iraqi city of Karbala, a religious leader in Kuwait has said. "Ayatollah (Mohammed Taqi al-)Madrassi was stopped on a road to Karbala with around 60 of his companions aboard two buses coming from Iran," Azhar al-Khafaji, secretary general of the Iraqi Islamic National Front, told Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television. The ayatollah was "returning to Iraq after 32 years of exile spent fighting Saddam Hussein's regime". "The convoy was stopped at a roadblock in a...

<p>When his Iraqi parents visited Minnesota in 1998, Adnan Shati took them to Rainbow Foods to show them America's plenty. "But, Babba [son]," his father said. "All this we had before Saddam." When Shati was a boy, he said, fish were so plentiful in the Euphrates River that his family caught them in bowls and harvested rice from the acres of paddies that his father owned. They lived on lush land near the ancient city of Ur -- near where the Garden of Eden is reputed to have been. Then Saddam Hussein's forces dammed the upstream waters, turning the marshes to dust. Migratory birds no longer stopped there. Crops no longer grew. Now Shati's extended family lives in Nasiriyah and buys tomatoes grown in Kuwait with money he sends.</p>

<p>BAGHDAD, Iraq — A longtime Iraqi exile who has proclaimed himself in charge of Baghdad pledged Sunday that the country's new constitution would be derived from Islamic law and promised to try anyone whose "hands are stained with the blood of the Iraqi people."</p>