April 13

Iraq: US MARINES MAKING PLANS TO STOP LOOTING ~~

Associated Press: In Baghdad, US Marines and an Iraqi police official said US forces and Iraqi police would soon begin joint patrols to try to stop looting and re-establish authority in the capital.

Iraqi police Colonel Mohammed Zaki said the patrols would start in a day or two, but the Marines did not give a definite time for the patrols to begin. "It's going to happen sooner rather than later," said Marine Staff Sgt Jeremy Stafford.

Also in the capital, Lieutenant General Amir al-Saadi, an adviser to President Saddam Hussein who once oversaw Iraq's chemical weapons program, turned himself in to US forces, according to Germany's ZDF television. The station said al-Saadi, who has a German wife, had asked it to send a crew to witness his surrender for his own safety.

ZDF quoted al-Saadi as saying he knew nothing about Saddam's fate and repeating what he said many times in news conferences - that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction. Al-Saadi is the first person on the US Central Command's list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis to be seized.

In northern Iraq, the Kurdish militiamen who captured Kirkuk were beginning to withdraw, solving a political problem with neighbouring Turkey. The Turks feared Kurdish control of the oil centre would be a step toward a state for Iraqi Kurds, which could stir up Turkey's Kurdish minority.

Also, US Marines were stopping vehicles to search for any soldiers or paramilitary fighters trying to escape the city of Kut, 150km south-east of Baghdad. The Marines were operating north and south of Kut, which is believed to be a stronghold of foreign fighters - possibly al-Qaeda-affiliated.

In Baghdad, American troops remained focused on erasing military threats instead of curbing lawlessness. Marines showed reporters a cache of about 50 explosives-laden suicide bomb vests in an elementary school less than six metres from the nearest home.

At a nearby junior high school, seven classrooms were filled with hundreds of crates of grenade launchers, surface-to-air missiles and ammunition. Residents said Iraqi soldiers and militiamen had positioned weaponry throughout the neighbourhood before US forces moved in.

"We didn't imagine this much stuff here," said Lieutenant David Wright, of Goldsboro, North Carolina. "Every 200 meters we find something."

As a way to establish law and order in Iraq, the State Department says it is sending 26 police and judicial officers as the first component of a team that will eventually number about 1,200. The officers will work under Jay Garner, the retired general chosen to run the initial Iraqi civil administration under American occupation.

Much of the looting in Baghdad and other cities has targeted government ministries and homes of former regime leaders, but looters have also ransacked embassies, stolen ambulances from hospitals and robbed some businesses.

Also looted was the Iraq National Museum, which had priceless artifacts dating back to 5,000 BC. Reporters visiting it saw row after row of empty glass cases, many of them smashed, and bits of broken pottery and sculpture. US forces reopened two strategic bridges in the heart of Baghdad - giving looters easier access to territory that had previously been spared. US forces watched but did not intervene as plunderers swarmed into several government buildings.