Former Saddam general not in charge in Falluja, says US

12.00pm - By TODD EASTHAM

WASHINGTON - General Jasim Mohamed Saleh, a former general under Saddam Hussein, is unlikely to take charge in the volatile Iraqi city of Falluja, the senior US military commander said on Sunday. He blamed the media for "very bad" reporting on US plans to pacify the Sunni Muslim stronghold.

"There's another general they're looking at," Gen Richard B Myers told ABC's This Week. "My guess is, it will not be General Saleh. ... He will not be their leader ... He may have a role to play, but that vetting has yet to take place," the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff added.

At the Marines camp outside Falluja, Lieutenant General James Conway told reporters that another former senior Iraqi officer, Mohamed Latif, was also working with the Marines in a "mentoring" capacity and was being considered as a possible commander for the overall brigade, once it was established.

Myers, who said Marines have not withdrawn from Falluja, did not respond to a question on Fox News Sunday on whether Saleh, a former general in Saddam's elite Republican Guard, had been involved with the brutal suppression of Iraq's Kurdish minority, but he reiterated that Saleh was not in command of the forces inside Falluja.

"The reporting to date has been ... very, very inaccurate," Myers told Fox News. "We've got a lot of help from tribal sheiks and other folks."

Myers' appearance on three different political talk shows seemed calculated to counter reporting out of Iraq suggesting the US military had suffered a virtual defeat in Falluja and had turned to Saddam's former military chiefs to salvage the situation.

"No, it's not a reversal," Myers insisted on ABC of his remarks that failed to confirm Saleh as military chief in Falluja. "... Again, as I said, the reporting on this has been very, very bad and way ahead of the facts."

"When you wake up and you see CNN and they say, 'The Marines are withdrawing from Falluja,' and you see a sand-coloured vehicle moving, we all jumped to the same conclusion, 'Well, they are leaving."'

Footage aired on CNN on Saturday showed Saleh entering Falluja in a column of vehicles and being greeted with handshakes from unidentified US soldiers. US forces have also pulled back some kilometres from their original siege lines and allowed hundreds of former Iraqi soldiers to enter the city.

"The Marines have not withdrawn from Falluja," Myers told CBS' Face the Nation. "They are not withdrawing from Falluja."

Saleh himself played down his own position in Saddam's Baath party and said he left the Republican Guard before becoming an infantry general. However, a senior Shi'ite politician said he had also been a general in the Guard itself.

"Obviously it's not going to be in anyone's interests to put someone who is connected with the former regime and with atrocities in charge," Myers told CBS, when pressed on how much US authorities knew about Saleh's history.

Jalal Talabani, an Iraqi Governing Council member and leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, told CNN's Late Edition that Saleh was acceptable to the council.

"Inside the Iraqi army, even in the commanders of the Republican Guard, there were many who were against the regime" of Saddam Hussein, Talabani said.

"... Because the people of Falluja choose this man and this man will do his best we must forget something that happened in the past," said Talabani, without elaborating.

A US official said rank would not exclude anyone from a role in the new Iraqi forces, although another official in the Iraq administration said the policy of excluding senior figures of Saddam's regime remained "rock solid."

"The goals and objectives ... in Falluja have been what they've been all along," Myers insisted.

"We've got to deal with the extremist and foreign fighters, we've got to get rid of the heavy weapons and we've got to find the folks that perpetrated the Blackwater atrocity" in which four American private security guards were killed and mutilated by a mob in the Sunni Muslim city, Myers said.

" ... It would be preferable if the Iraqis would deal with this situation. ... We think we are very close to having Iraqis help achieve our objectives in Falluja.

"... We think that is far preferable than the US going into there in a very major combat operation to achieve those objectives. ... If we can make this work then it's going to be a good example for the rest of Iraq."

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq