WASHINGTON, April 28: Former Iraqi deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, has told investigators that his deposed leader, Saddam Hussein, survived two US airstrikes against him on March 19 and April 7, NBC News reported on Monday.

Quoting Pentagon sources, the US television channel said Mr Aziz is cooperating with his American investigators but is not “providing a lot of useful information.”

There has been no confirmation of his claim that Mr Hussein survived the attacks.

US officials, when asked to give more information about the Iraqi leader’s reported survival, said they were not in a position to do so.

President George W. Bush said last week that an Iraqi informer who had directed US airstrikes on Mr Hussein’s hideouts had confirmed that he was killed in the first attack.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon said that US forces also have taken custody of Lt-Gen Hossam Mohammed Amin, chief Iraqi liaison with UN weapons inspectors.

Amin, the former Iraqi National Monitoring Director, was No 49 on the US list of the 55 most wanted figures from the regime of Saddam Hussein and was captured near the town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad on the road that leads to Syria and Jordan.

Amin, also known as Hossem Mohammed Amin al-Yasin, was among the key figures in Saddam’s weapons programmes and would have detailed knowledge of any illegal armaments, if Iraq still possesses them.

The general headed the Iraqi monitoring commission for more than a decade. Others on the committee included Gen Amer Rashid, Iraq’s minister of oil, and Amir al-Saadi, Saddam’s senior weapons adviser who is also in coalition custody.

The committee was later expanded into the Military Industrialization Organization which produced all of Iraq’s most lethal weapons.