September 26, 2003	Friday	Rajab 28, 1424

DUBAI, Sept 25: Former Iraqi information minister Mohammad Said as Sahhaf said on Wednesday that US bombing did not target the places where Saddam Hussein was sheltering during the US-led invasion and that the former president made his first wartime speech from a house close to his main palace.

“Only once did the bombing target an area 400-to-500 metres away” from where Saddam Hussein had been staying, “in a simple villa at the edge of the Zahra neighbourhood” of Baghdad, Mr Sahhaf told Abu Dhabi Television.

At one point, Saddam stayed for “five consecutive days in Al Amirat street of the Mansur neighbourhood”, but it was never hit by the US bombers, Mr Sahhaf told the channel in Abu Dhabi, in the second of a series of interviews to be aired over several weeks.

Mr Sahhaf, renowned for his no-holds-barred attacks on the US invaders during the war, said US intelligence, “if indeed there was intelligence,” was wrong.

He accused the US military of “destroying many civilian targets” under the pretext that Saddam was there, and said the bombing had particularly struck locations visited by UN arms inspectors during their work in Iraq.

Mr Sahhaf said Saddam, who wrote his speeches himself since “some time in the 1980s,” had made his first televised address of the war on March 20, hours after a pre-dawn US attack aimed at killing him, from a house adjacent to the main presidential compound in Baghdad.

“We will resist the invaders ... The devil will be defeated,” Saddam vowed in the speech.

Asked if Saddam’s death would have been announced if it had happened, Mr Sahhaf said maybe not, but joked that this would not have been a decision for him to make.

Mr Sahhaf, who said he saw Saddam several times during the war, noted that the issue of his possible killing had not been debated by the leadership, but the constitution made clear that he would have been succeeded by his number two on the ruling Revolution Command Council, Ezzat Ibrahim.

The interview was interspersed by exclusive wartime footage, including a meeting during which Saddam was heard telling aides briefing him on the military situation in southern Iraq that “the British are a bit more intelligent than the Americans.”

Saddam, who was also shown praying, “is a religious man who prays and fasts, and this was the case since before he came to power” in 1979, according to Mr Sahhaf.

The wartime information supremo said all components of the Iraqi armed forces had enough equipment to fight for at least three months without rationing the use of their weaponry, following which they would have had to restrict the use of weapons and ammunition to ensure that stockpiles and production could meet demand.—AFP