DUBAI, Aug 19: The capture of deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein would end the Baath Party, but not anti-US attacks, Washington’s overseer in Iraq, Paul Bremer, said in an interview published on Tuesday in an Arab daily.

“There’s no doubt that he (Saddam Hussein) will be captured...It’s useful for our presence in Iraq that he be captured or killed. That would put a definitive end to the Baath regime,” Mr Bremer said in an interview published in Arabic in the Al Hayat newspaper.

But Mr Bremer admitted that the demise of Saddam Hussein would not stamp out the almost daily attacks against US forces, mainly in the Sunni-dominated areas in northern Iraq and west of Baghdad.

Such guerilla-style attacks have killed 61 American soldiers since US President George Bush declared major combat operations in Iraq over on May 1.

“This (Saddam’s demise) will not end the violence against us but it may reduce it,” Paul Bremer was quoted as saying.

He said three main groups were driving the attacks against US troops, including members of Fedayeen-i-Saddam, a paramilitary group loyal to the former president, which Mr Bremer labelled “professional criminals who are pursuing their goal of finishing us off, with or without Saddam”.

There are also “other criminals that number about 100,000, whom Saddam freed from prison...and foreign terrorists in Iraq”.

Mr Bremer said the biggest threat to US forces comes from Ansar al Islam, a militant group that the US has linked to the Al Qaeda network.

The 700 to 900-member group ruled a tiny border area of northeastern Iraq until late March when Kurdish fighters and US troops assaulted their bases, killing many while the survivors went away to Iran.

Since Saddam’s fall from power, about 50 foreign fighters, suspected of heading to Iraq to fight US troops, have been arrested in the northern province of Suleimaniyah, a Kurdish official said this week.

“Their exact number is unknown...but it could be a few hundred,” said Paul Bremer, who also warned Iran against “interfering” in Iraq’s “internal affairs”. —AFP