March 29, 2003	Saturday	Muharram 25, 1424

NEW DELHI, March 28: A retired Indian lieutenant general who once trained Iraq’s army and says he was given a gold watch by Saddam Hussein said on Friday the Iraqi leader would be ready to die in the battle for Baghdad.

Lieutenant General K.S. Randhawa also told Reuters in an interview Iraq knew it could not win the war, but would be ready to fight on for months, aiming to draw US and British troops into its cities for a protracted and bloody campaign.

“Saddam will, pushed to the wall, die like Hitler in a bunker. He will never accept any arrangement because he must think about what his people think about him,” said Randhawa.

Randhawa trained the Iraqi army in armoured warfare in the mid-1970s and since his retirement in 1990 has gone back regularly to Baghdad and says he still retains close ties there.

He said it was unlikely Iraq would use chemical weapons on US and British troops, but added “it would be naive to think that they don’t have these things”.

“I think the Iraqis will not use chemical weapons unless they are pushed very hard to the wall and the United States shows complete disregard for human life and for the future of Iraq.

“Then they might say ‘we are going, we will take the Americans with us’. Otherwise they won’t use.”

He said the United States and Britain had miscalculated by underestimating the strength of the likely Iraqi resistance.

The Iraqi army would focus the bulk of its strength in its cities, reducing the impact of superior US and British firepower by forcing them into urban warfare, while also harrying their advancing troops from the rear.

Randhawa, who proudly displays a gold watch he says was presented to him by Saddam, says the Iraqis would try to cause many casualties to try to turn public opinion in the United States and Britain against the war.

“It certainly won’t finish in a couple of months.”

Randhawa said he did not think the Iraqi leadership really believed Iraq could win the war. “At best they can stall, delay and hope it will change world opinion,” he said.

Asked whether he thought Saddam realised he would die whatever happened, he said, “Definitely. He is a very intelligent man. I don’t want to say he has gone into the war planning to die. He went in fully accepting that ‘if need be, I’ll die’.”—Reuters