US issues list of 55 Iraqi leaders for arrest or killing
By Our Correspondent
WASHINGTON, April 11: The United States announced on Friday a most-wanted list of former Iraqi leaders who, Washington says “must be brought to justice.”
The list includes 55 members of the Saddam government whose names along with their pictures have been printed on posters and playing cards and are being distributed across Iraq.
All on this list would be “pursued, killed or captured,” says a statement issued by the US Central Command.
The list has also been given to coalition soldiers in Iraq in several forms, including the flip-deck of playing cards with an image of the person’s face and job description of each official “to ease identification when contact does occur,” the announcement said.
Coalition forces are also hanging posters and distributing handbills throughout Iraq to “to help the coalition gain information from the Iraqi people so that they also know exactly who it is we seek,” the Central Command said.
Some on the list may have already been killed or captured, the announcement said.
Meanwhile, at the Friday morning briefing, Pentagon officials told reporters in Washington that Iraqi forces are putting up “a spirited defence” for Tikrit, the homeland of President Saddam Hussein, which is also a stronghold of the former ruling Baath Party.
They said coalition warplanes had been pounding Tikrit to weaken the Republican Guard which had gathered in Tikrit after the fall of Baghdad. US defence officials say the way the Republican Guard troops are fighting for Tikrit, shows that some important Iraqi leaders may be hiding there.
The Pentagon, however, refused to speculate whether President Saddam and his two sons were also in Tikrit.
Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke described the security situation as “erratic throughout Iraq” but said some local leaders in the south, including religious leaders, are exhorting Iraqis not to loot.
AWARDS: President Bush presented Purple Hearts to several soldiers, sailors and marines wounded in Iraq and also watched ceremonies granting US citizenship to two members of the armed services wounded in combat in Iraq.
He met 40 patients at the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington and presented Purple Hearts to several of them.
The Purple Heart is awarded to members of the US armed forces who are wounded in combat and posthumously to the next of kin in the name of those killed in action.
SYRIA-IRAQ BORDER BLOCKED: US forces arrived in the region bordering Syria to cut off traffic between Iraq and its Arab neighbour, officials said on Friday.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has repeatedly accused Syria of helping the Saddam government.
Officials in Washington said US Special Forces set up roadblocks and checkpoints along routes to Syria and were searching for fleeing members of the Iraqi regime or fighters and equipment coming in from Syria.
They said US aircraft were also monitoring the routes, and had attacked Iraqi positions near the Syrian border.
US officials acknowledged that monitoring the 500km Iraqi-Syrian frontier would be a difficult task. The border is easy to cross because only areas close to official crossing points are fenced for a few kilometres in either direction.
Beyond the official crossing points and the Tigris River, which forms the frontier in the north, the terrain is wide open, and people cross on foot, by donkeys or four-wheel-drive vehicles.
Syrian border guards patrol in search of possible infiltrators or smugglers.
Border points are still open, but journalists visiting the area said Syrian border security guards are not allowing Syrians or Palestinians living in Syria to cross into Iraq. Only Iraqis are allowed to enter Iraq, as well as foreigners with valid Iraqi visas.
Meanwhile, reports in the US media on Friday said that Syrian and Palestinian volunteers who had come to Iraq to fight along side the Iraqi troops were now returning home.
Some of these volunteers were returning from Mosul after the local Iraqi commanders surrendered to the Kurdish and US forces.
