(Ha'aretz) Ze'ev Schiff - Saddam Hussein could be offered a deal in which he would give his captors information on if and how he hid weapons of mass destruction and if he smuggled some of them into Syria. In exchange, he would face life imprisonment and not be executed for war crimes, senior Iraqis have hinted. Even if the number of concealed weapons of mass destruction is not large, Saddam will certainly know who he appointed to take charge of the operation and in what area the weapons are being stored. Kurds claimed that most of the information leading to Saddam's arrest had come from Kurds, who had organized their own intelligence network and for months had been trying to uncover Saddam's tracks. The capture of Saddam will not mean an automatic, immediate end to guerrilla warfare and terror attacks against the coalition forces. The forces opposed to the Americans are mostly made up of former members of the Ba'ath movement, of Saddam's security and intelligence forces, and volunteers from Arab states, and have merely lost their "symbol" with Saddam's capture. An Iraqi trial of Saddam would make internal reconciliation more difficult and could be seen as an American Iraqi-purifying trial. A special international war crimes trial, however, would have greater global resonance and would act as a deterrent against committing war crimes in the future.
2003-12-15 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive