Thousands of Iraqis protest against US

1.00pm

BAGHDAD - Unfurling banners that declared "Leave our country," tens of thousands of Baghdad protesters have demanded that the United States get out of Iraq while leaders of the oil-rich nation's neighbours meeting in Saudi Arabia also call for a speedy US departure.


Muslims poured out of mosques and into the streets of Baghdad, calling for an Islamic state to be established in the biggest protest since US forces toppled Saddam Hussein's iron-fisted, 24-year-long rule nine days ago.

Carrying Korans, prayer mats and banners, tens of thousands of people marched in a protest that organisers said represented both Iraq's majority Shi'ite Muslims and powerful Sunnis.


"Leave our country, we want peace," read one banner. "No Bush, No Saddam, Yes Yes to Islam," read another.


Meanwhile, while the United States pressed ahead with its plans for a post-war Iraq, foreign ministers of the country's neighbours meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, called on the United Nations to take a central role in rebuilding the country.


"In order for US forces to withdraw as soon as possible, we call on the occupying authority to set up a transitional government quickly and make all efforts to set up a broad-based constitutional Iraqi government," said an opening statement read at the meeting.


Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said US-led forces should leave soon and let the United Nations help Iraqis run their affairs and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher also said the participants wanted a swift withdrawal of US-led forces.

Barring Syria and Iran, all participants at the talks are key US allies that offered some form of support for the invasion. But they all fear the United States will install a puppet regime in Iraq which would ally itself with Israel.


The US Central Command in Qatar said Iraqi Kurds had captured and handed over Samir Abul Aziz al-Najim, a senior Baghdad official of Saddam's Baath Party, near Mosul in northern Iraq.


He was the fourth person to be detained from a US list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis. US Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told a news briefing Najim may have been posted to northern Iraq to take command of some military operations there.


The three other leading Iraqis held by US forces are Saddam's half-brothers Barzan and Watban Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti and top scientific adviser Amer Hammoudi al-Saadi.


Abu Dhabi television, meanwhile, aired footage said to show Saddam and his son Qusay addressing a crowd in Baghdad from the top of a car on April 9 - the day the city fell.


The state-run channel also played an audio tape which it said was the last radio speech broadcast by Saddam, but it was not clear when the speech was thought to have been recorded.


Abu Dhabi TV said the pictures were shot in the northern Aadhamiya district and that the video tape had been obtained by its Baghdad correspondent from undisclosed sources.


A US intelligence official said the United States would review it to determine whether Saddam, target of at least two bombing raids aimed directly at him, had indeed survived.


In the audio tape, the voice said to be that of Saddam called on Iraqis to make sacrifices "to protect our land and our rights."


It added, "Regardless of the time needed to achieve victory and regardless of the forms of the struggle that might be needed, regardless of the length of the occupation, the freedom of the people is the most important."


Abu Dhabi TV said the pictures were taken on the same day US tanks drove into central Baghdad and Iraqis toppled a massive statue of Saddam.


Organisers of Friday's mass demonstration in Baghdad called themselves the Iraqi National United Movement. The protest served notice of the hostility that the United States, which has appointed a retired American general to lead an interim administration in Iraq, is likely to face from sectors of the influential Muslim clergy.

The United States is now turning its focus to kick-starting Iraq's shattered economy, hit by three wars in 23 years and economic sanctions since 1990.


US officials told Reuters in Kuwait the United Nations must lift sanctions within weeks to help the country recover, but Washington faces an uphill battle to get them dropped quickly as the issue raises questions over who controls Iraq's oil and thus who in effect runs the country.


The officials, briefing Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the US would open Iraq's borders to tariff-free trade for 90 days once the embargo was lifted.


They also forecast Iraq could not rely on using its oil revenues for about a year until it sorted out its debt, estimated at more than $100 billion, and war reparation claims.


Pro-American Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi told a news conference in Baghdad the United Nations lacked the capability and credibility to take a leadership role in Iraq.


Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and the man seen by many analysts as Washington's choice to lead Iraq, said he did not want a post in an interim government but left open the possibility of standing in democratic elections.


A semblance of order appeared to be returning to the northern city of Mosul which has been rocked by a week of looting and violence since US troops and Kurdish allies took the city unopposed.


Mosul residents who had crossed the Tigris river to the western part of the city, where Arabs are concentrated and where the worst of the trouble occurred, said security had improved.


Australian special forces have found 51 Mig fighter planes hidden at an airfield in western Iraq, a senior Australian officer said on Friday.


Lieutenant Colonel Mark Elliott said some of the planes had been buried or covered over with dirt while others were hidden in buildings or under camouflage netting.


"To date we've found 51 aircraft, various types of Migs," Elliott told Reuters at war headquarters in Qatar.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq war