Naseer Al-Nahr • Asharq Al-Awsat

BAGHDAD, 30 July 2003 — Saddam Hussein yesterday taunted US soldiers anxious to catch or kill the fugitive dictator and put an end to a daring insurgency campaign which threatens the coalition’s rebuilding efforts.

Saddam emerged in elusive fashion as Al-Arabiya satellite TV aired what it said was a new audiotape of the most-wanted man in Iraq mourning his sons Uday and Qusay, killed in a one-sided battle by US forces in the northern city of Mosul exactly one week ago.

“We thank God for honoring us with their martyrdom for His sake” after a “valiant battle with the enemy lasting six hours,” said the baritone voice purported to be that of Saddam, the man with a 25-million-dollar price on his head.

It was the fifth tape attributed to Saddam since his overthrow by US-led coalition forces on April 9. Most of the previous tapes aired on Arab TV stations were deemed authentic by US intelligence.

Looking beyond the Saddam-era, Iraq’s 25-member governing council chose a rotating nine-member presidency, designed to represent the nation’s rich pool of ethnic groups and persuade them the executive voice was one for all. The council, unveiled on July 13, named a nine-member rotating presidency, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) spokesman Hoshyar Zebari told reporters. The nine will include five Shiite Muslims, two Sunnis, and two Kurdish members of the 25-strong council, inaugurated under the auspices of the US-led occupation administration earlier this month. The council will decide the order in which the nine will serve today.

In the latest chapter of the hunt for Saddam, dozens of US troops backed by air support raided at least two homes at 4:00 a.m. (0000 GMT) and nabbed four Baathists, including a possible brigadier general, in the ousted president’s hometown of Tikrit.

A military spokesman in Baghdad backed off from a claim he made earlier yesterday that one of the men was a bodyguard for Saddam. The predawn raid came as US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage appeared to signal that only clean surrender could guarantee Saddam’s survival and that he should be killed without hesitation if capturing him alive meant risking the lives of US soldiers.