Iraq

Another Hussein adviser nabbed

Coalition forces captured a senior Baath Party official on the U.S. most wanted list, marking the second major arrest of a close Saddam Hussein adviser in as many days, Central Command said Friday.

Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said Samir Abd al-Aziz al-Najim was handed over to U.S. troops by Iraqi Kurds near the northern city of Mosul overnight.

U.S. forces are conducting a nationwide search for Hussein and his leadership group. Also Friday, a U.S. official said a top Iraqi scientist, called the "father" of one of his country's nerve agent programs, has surrendered to American authorities.

Emad Husayn Abdullah al-Ani was believed to be deeply involved in Iraq's chemical weapons program and his surrender could be an important advance in the U.S. search for chemical and biological weapons inside Iraq.

Al-Najim was the Baath Party regional command chairman for east Baghdad and was ranked as the four of clubs on the 52-card deck U.S. military officials handed out to American forces to help in identifying wanted Iraqi officials.

The U.S. Central Command issued a list of the top wanted individuals in the Iraqi regime, ranking them with their names and often pictures on a deck of 52 playing cards. Three more suspects were added to the list of the wanted, but new cards weren't created to represent them.

Al-Najim was a member of the Baath Party's Regional Command, the top decisionmaking body of the party. He was Iraqi oil minister until last month and was Hussein's chief of staff for several years after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Al-Najim was replaced without explanation as acting oil minister by Lt. Gen. Amer Mohammed Rashid, who had retired from the job in January.

Al-Najim is a Sunni Arab from Baghdad and a veteran Baath Party member who took part with Hussein in the attempt to kill Prime Minister Abdel Karim Qassem in 1959.

While Hussein escaped to Syria and later Egypt, al-Najim was condemned to death for his role in the plot. Qassem later pardoned him and his accomplices.

In 1969, after the Baath Party came to power, al-Najim assumed key responsibilities in the party, including overseeing its intelligence operation.

Al-Najim had served as Iraq's ambassador to Egypt, Turkey, Spain, Moscow and the Arab League and was a top insider among the coterie around Hussein. He was recalled from abroad in the late 1980s and assigned to the president's office.

As the search for other suspects continues, Idris Al Senussi, a leading figure of the Libyan opposition in exile, says some Iraqis were evacuated via Damascus last week with Libyan assistance.

Al Senussi is the grandson of Libya's King Idris, ousted in a military coup while on a trip to Turkey in 1969.

He said a private plane left a military base in Libya at 6 p.m. April 9, flew to the Syrian capital and returned at 4 a.m. the next morning with a planeload of Iraqis. Al Senussi said he informed the Pentagon as soon as he received word from his sources on the ground.

"Satellite imaging confirmed our reports, but upon checking with the Libyan authorities, U.S. officials were told that this was a humanitarian mission, carried out to evacuate family members of some of the leadership," he said.

-- Information from the Washington Post was used in this report.