Sort of looks like Madeliene halfbright with a mustache
Posted on 09/19/2003 5:55:01 PM PDT by blam
US seeks 40,000 troops as Saddam aide surrenders
By Jack Fairweather in Baghdad and Robin Gedye
(Filed: 20/09/2003)
Saddam Hussein's former defence minister surrendered to American forces yesterday, as it emerged that Washington has increased its demand for extra foreign troops in Iraq from 10,000 to at least 40,000.
Sultan Hashim Ahmed was number 27 on Washington's list of top-ranking officials and the eight of hearts in the pack of playing cards used by American troops to identify those at the heart of Saddam's circle.
He turned himself in after long negotiations in the northern city of Mosul, culminating in a promise that he would be treated with dignity and not sentenced to prison.
The promise, made on Mosul television, said the former general would be "treated with dignity and respect and be allowed the opportunity to explain his former situation".
The Americans hope that this will encourage other Saddam loyalists to give themselves up, and even reduce the daily attacks on United States forces.
In Baghdad last night an explosion blew a crater by the roadside, apparently the result of a bomb which detonated prematurely. There were no casualties.
American forces arrested some 55 suspects in Tikrit, Saddam's home town, after a gun attack in which three soldiers were killed on Thursday evening.
Forty of those on the most wanted list have so far been killed or captured as the hunt for Saddam narrows. A Coalition Provisional Authority official said: "Every time we get to chalk off another person on the list we get a little closer to Saddam. We're gathering a lot of useful intelligence on his whereabouts.'
The general who surrendered was a relatively minor figure in the ousted Saddam government.
A general in the Iraqi military during the first Gulf war who helped to negotiate Iraq's surrender to allied forces, Ahmed was one of the deeply loyal but unambitious figures favoured by Saddam.
Ahmed was last seen in film of the former president waving to crowds said to have been taken in Baghdad on April 9, the day American forces entered the city.
The latest demand for troops betrays America's increasingly open anxiety over the deteriorating security in Iraq.
Officials of Turkey, Pakistan and South Korea said Washington had asked them to consider providing between 10,000 and 20,000 troops as part of a multinational force under a United Nations umbrella.
Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, said this month he was hoping for "maybe another division" - around 10,000 troops - from other countries to serve in Iraq.
The provision of additional forces depends on the wording of a new UN resolution, being hammered out behind closed doors in New York, which will seek to accommodate the objections of countries which do not want to be working under American command.
Washington believes it is important to include forces from Muslim countries, such as Pakistan and Turkey, in the multinational force as a way of defusing hatred towards American troops.
Well-placed Pakistani sources have suggested that even if Islamabad were to commit soldiers to Iraq, the figure would be closer to 3,000 rather than the 10,000 to 12,000 the United States is understood to have requested.
Turkey is keener to contribute to a multi-national force because of its interest in gaining a military foothold in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq.
However, Washington has made it clear to Ankara that its troops would have to be deployed in the south.
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