BAGHDAD, 6 May 2003 — The United States yesterday announced the capture of a top female biological weapons scientist from Saddam Hussein’s deposed regime, as the coalition named a list of Iraqis who could form the core of an interim government for the country.
Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, dubbed “Mrs. Anthrax”, ranks number 53 on the list of the 55 former Iraqi officials most wanted by the United States, where she is portrayed as the five of hearts.
“This (the capture) would be very important to the coalition in their ability to get additional information about the scope of the BW (biological warfare) program,” a US official said.
Ammash, the only woman on the US wanted list, is believed to have been a leader of Iraq’s biological warfare program and appeared in a videotape of Saddam meeting top advisers aired shortly after the start of the US-led war on March 20.
News of her arrest came as the US civil administrator for postwar Iraq said the core of an interim government aimed at taking Iraq toward free elections could be in place within weeks.
“By the middle of the month, you’ll really see a beginning of a nucleus of an Iraqi government with an Iraqi face on it that is dealing with the coalition,” retired Gen. Jay Garner said. He said a group of five opposition leaders, which could be expanded to form leadership council of nine, had already held meetings with US officials including White House envoy Zalmay Khalilzad.
Garner named as possible candidates for the council Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani — the country’s two main Kurdish leaders — as well as Iraqi National Congress head Ahmed Chalabi, who is favored in some quarters in Washington. The other two leaders are Iyad Allawi of the Iraqi National Accord, and Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, whose elder brother heads the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
As efforts continued to rebuild Iraq’s political structures — in tatters after a quarter of a century of Saddam’s dictatorship — US forces helped an assembly of 200 people elect a mayor and municipal council for the northern oil city of Mosul to reflect its complex ethnic make-up.
Delegates in the city, where several people were killed in intercommunal violence last month, elected an Arab mayor, a Kurdish deputy mayor and two assistant mayors from the Turkmen and Assyrian Christian communities.
However nearly four weeks after toppling Saddam on April 9, the United States has still to give any precise indication when it will hand over the reins of power to an Iraqi government and end its military occupation — an issue that has infuriated many Iraqis.
There is also widespread concern about the precarious humanitarian and security situation, with the United Nations warning on Sunday that Iraq was still not clear of a humanitarian disaster.
Garner, who later traveled on a visit to Iraq’s second city of Basra, said May would be a “key month” for restoring public services and security, both still absent in large swathes of the country. He also voiced disappointment that the US-led administration had been unable to launch extensive television and radio services in Iraq so far, admitting, “we haven’t done a good job”.
