BAGHDAD, 22 February 2004 — Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross visited Saddam Hussein in US custody for the first time yesterday.

The two Red Cross delegates, one of them a doctor, met the ousted Iraqi leader at an undisclosed detention facility in Iraq, International Committee of the Red Cross spokeswoman Nada Doumani said in Amman.

She said Saddam was allowed to write a note to his family, and that the Red Cross would visit him again. She gave no details on his appearance or condition.

The ICRC is mandated to visit detainees under the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of warfare but will not speak publicly on what conditions it finds. The delegates will, however, share their findings with the US-led coalition forces holding Saddam.

“The aim of this visit is to track and monitor the conditions of detention and treatment of the detainee,” Doumani said.

“We want to see whether he is getting enough food and water and also to check his health condition and to give him the possibility to write a message to his family, which he did.” US forces captured Iraq’s former president on Dec. 13 hiding in a hole on a farm in a village close to his hometown of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, after eight months on the run.

The ICRC visit came as Iraq’s US administrator L. Paul Bremer said that it could take up to 15 months to hold elections in the war-torn country. In an interview with the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television station, Bremer cited the absence of election laws, voters lists and reliable census data as obstacles to a quick election. “These technical problems will take time to fix,” he said in the interview with the station Friday that was broadcast yesterday. He said the United Nations estimates “somewhere between a year and 15 months,” though that could be sped up. Bremer did not say if he had a timeframe of his own in mind.

Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Husseini Al-Sistani, demanded elections to choose a legislature before the planned June 30 transfer of power from the US-led coalition to the Iraqis.

The United States and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said a vote by the end of June was not feasible, and Bremer insisted earlier this week that the deadline will not be changed. The Americans would prefer to hand power over to an expanded Iraqi Governing Council in July. Adnan Pachachi, a prominent Sunni member, said yesterday that the Governing Council had not held formal discussions on alternatives such as a council expansion, although some politicians had proposed increasing the size to about 100.

In another development, the president of the Council said that Baghdad could consider territorial claims over neighboring Jordan and Kuwait in the future. “We need our Arab brothers around us. Now, we cannot discuss this matter with them at all, but in the future, we’ll see,” said Mohsen Abdel Hamid, in response to a question from a Baghdad Consultative Council member.

— Additional input from agencies