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The US military said on Saturday that it has captured Iraqi Finance Minister Hikmat al-Azzawi while Turkey said Iraq's neighbors had no idea about fleeing Iraqi leaders' whereabouts.
Major Randi Steffy said at the US Central Command in Doha, Qatar, that al-Azzawi "was captured by Iraqi police in Baghdad and turned over to the (US) First Marine Division on Friday."
Central Command spokesman Marine Captain Stewart Upton said al-Azzawi, who ranks 45th on a US most-wanted list of 55 Iraqi leaders, should know where Saddam Hussein had kept its wealth.
Meanwhile, Turkey's Turkiye daily reported on Saturday that Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul had said Turkey and other neighbors of Iraq did not know where fleeing Iraqi leaders are now.
Speaking to reporters Friday after meeting with his Syrian counterpart, Faruk Shareh, Gul said he asked Shareh whether he had any information on the fleeing Iraqi leaders, and was told that Syria doesn't have any information either.
"As I see, everybody has talked about more or less the issue. But, all the foreign ministers don't have any information about it." Gul said.
As US Marines are pulling out of Baghdad, soldiers from the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division have moved in many areas of Baghdad Saturday, taking over control of the capital city from Marines. Elements of the US 4th Infantry Division and the 101st Airborne Division also rolled into the city.
About 1,600 Marines left Baghdad early Saturday to head south to an assembly area near the central southern Iraqi town of Kerbala, Marine officers said.
It was part of a US plan to reorganize the pattern of US forces in Iraq, because the Army has more resources than the Marines, the vanguard striking forces, to deal with civil duties.
Under the plan, troops from the Army's 3rd Infantry Division will remain in Baghdad, while the 4th Infantry Division will control the northern part of the country.
On the other hand, public anger has been heating up in Baghdad 10 days after the downfall of Saddam's government as more and more took to the streets to protest US occupation of their country and the US failure to provide sufficient food, water, medical care and security in the city.
About 500 Iraqis marched toward the Palestine Hotel, chanting anti-US slogans such as "No to occupation."
As the US forces are undertaking regrouping in Iraq, the George W. Bush administration is working on the diplomatic front to lift UN sanctions against Iraq.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that the US government plans to ask the United Nations to lift economic sanctions on Iraq in phases in a bid to bypass opposition from other countries.
US officials said that instead of a single UN Security Council resolution to lift the sanctions, the United States would seek three or four resolutions over several months, gradually turning over parts of the economy to an Iraqi authority assembled with US guidance.
However, how to approach this issue has been a matter of considerable debate in the administration, the newspaper said. The Pentagon has favored a minimal role for the United Nations, but the State Department argues that UN involvement is essential in terms of lending legitimacy to a postwar Iraqi government.
Although the war is drawing to a close, Iraqi children are facing another danger of bomblets left over by the US forces as the number of casualties kept rising in the past days.
Two children were killed and two others were injured Saturday afternoon when a bomblet that they found at a garden in Rahnania, western Baghdad, exploded, a doctor at the Al-Karkh hospital told Xinhua.
The doctor said the hospital had already received several victims killed or wounded by bombs left over by the war in Iraq which started on March 20.
In another similar incident, a 48-year-old mother of three lost one of her legs in a bomb explosion in Baghdad, which also injured two of her children. The bomb went off when she and her children were walking in the Ikhlas street in western Baghdad.
In Basra, the second largest Iraqi city, British forces resumed the train service from the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr with a trial run on Saturday.
"Possibly towards the end of next week, we are looking towards running some... food and water (to Basra)," British Major Neil Llewellyn told reporters.
The train link will eventually transport thousands of tons of food aid sitting in Umm Qasr to the rest of the war-torn country and is expected to extend beyond Basra and up to Baghdad.
In neighboring Jordan, national carrier Royal Jordanian Airlines is planning to resume flights to Baghdad.
Royal Jordanian wants to be one of the first carriers to resume flights to Baghdad once sanctions against Iraq are lifted and the safety of the country's airfield is guaranteed, said Samer Al Majali, the airline's director general, on Saturday.
The planned flights will be on a daily basis and his company is working to become a gate for travelers, goods and humanitarian aid to Iraq, said Majali.
(Xinhua News Agency April 20, 2003)
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