Abid Hamad Mahmoud al-Tikriti, Saddam's secretary and the No. 4 on the US most-wanted list of Iraqi officials, said Saddam had fled to Syria with his sons after the conflict, the newspaper quoted US Defense Department officials as saying on Friday.

The officials said they had not yet assessed the accuracy of the claims by Mahmoud, which reportedly controlled assess to Saddam as the Iraqi leader's most-trusted man.

But they said that the United States regarded the information as having enormous potential significance, and that it had ignited an intense burst of clandestine American military activities aimed at capturing the sons, Uday and Qusay, and perhaps even Saddam himself.

If the account Mahmoud has provided to his interrogators is true, it would be the most authoritative confirmation that neither Saddam nor his sons were killed in the US-led military actions against Iraq in March and April.

In a previous report published on Thursday, The New York Times said American intelligence analysts now believe that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is much more likely to be alive than dead.

The view has been strengthened in recent weeks by intercepted communications among fugitive members of the Saddam Fedayeen and the Iraqi intelligence service, the newspaper quoted US government officials as saying.

US officials said the conviction among Saddam's loyalists that he is still alive has emerged as a powerful motivating factor in the military resistance to US forces in Iraq.

(Xinhua News Agency June 22, 2003)