But the trailer was painted in military colours, on a carrier normally used for transporting tanks, while its gas recovery systems were “not necessary for legitimate biological work”, Mr Cambone said.The trailer is like the one outlined in the 5 February presentation to the UN Security Council by Colin Powell when the Secretary of State presented evidence suggesting that Baghdad had several such laboratories. American and British experts have concluded that a trailer found by Allied forces three weeks ago in northern Iraq was a mobile bioweapons laboratory, a senior Pentagon official said yesterday.
“They have not found another plausible use for it,” Stephen Cambone, under secretary of defence for intelligence said, confirming what appears to be the first real breakthrough in the search for Saddam Hussein’s alleged, but elusive, chemical, germ, and nuclear weapons programmes.He declined to describe the find as a “smoking gun,” saying substantial further testing was needed. Some Iraqis claimed to have seen Saddam in the Azamiyah district two days later – an appearance that was videotaped and broadcast by Abu Dhabi television – but some US officials dispute the authenticity of that tape.. Most Iraqis appear convinced that the dictator is still alive, and was not killed either in the salvo of cruise missiles fired by the Americans at the start of the war to “decapitate” the regime, or by a missile strike on a restaurant in Baghdad’s Mansur neighbourhood on 7 April, after Saddam was reportedly seen there.Many in Baghdad appear to believe that he is still somewhere in their midst, moving from house to house to avoid being caught by Americans There have been several rumoured sightings. The translator said the two had accents from Tikrit, Saddam’s home town, where support for the former president remains strong.The tape came as no surprise to people in Baghdad, who are likely to conclude it is authentic. The newspaper said its correspondent received the tape outside the Palestine Hotel, where many television stations are based, by two men who were trying to deliver it to an Arabic language channel – al-Jazeera or al-Arabiya – but took fright at the sight of American soldiers.When the newspaper’s translator pointed the way to the hotel, which is still ringed by razor wire and US forces, one of the two handed over the tape, saying the speech had been made by Saddam that day and it was his duty as an Iraqi to ensure it was made public. The paper said it had played the tape to an Australian linguistics expert and to more than a dozen Iraqis and their overwhelming opinion was that the voice and rhetoric were very similar, or identical, to Saddam’s.

It is their true attitude toward Saddam Hussein.”He calls on Iraqis to reject any new leaders “working with the foreigners” and to rise against the occupying powers by “not buying anything from them, or by shooting them with rifles and trying to destroy their cannons and tanks”.The tape was reportedly given to a correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday. It refers to celebrations by Iraqis on Saddam Hussein’s official 66th birthday on 28 April.”It was an Iraqi decision [to celebrate] because they consider Saddam Hussein as a brother or as a father to them,” the speaker says, “and this is just to express of their free will that nobody forced them to do it or to live in any way against their will. to kick the enemy out from our country.”The voice on the recording, which, according to Iraqis who have heard it, has the same phrasing and accent as their former leader, makes a marked effort to establish that the recording was recent. He says in a tired-sounding 15-minute monologue interspersed with coughs: “It sounds as if we have to go back to the secret style of struggle that we began our life with.” He exhorts “Arab and Kurd, Shiite and Sunni, Muslim and Christian and the whole Iraqi people of all religions … One month after the fall of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein – or someone who sounds like him – has issued a tape-recorded appeal to Iraqis to launch an underground war against the American and British occupation of their country.
The speaker on the audiotape says he is addressing his people by “secret means” from “inside great Iraq”.

The city’s water treatment system shut down after US-led air strikes damaged the electric grid, leaving large parts of the city without clean water for several weeks.Meanwhile, doctors in Baghdad angrily confronted the new head of the Health Ministry, formerly a prominent member of Saddam Hussein’s regime, in protest at his appointment.Doctors wearing their white coats peeled off from a demonstration of around 400 colleagues to hold heated exchanges with Ali Shnan al-Janabi, who was number three at the Health Ministry under President Saddam and has been appointed by the US-led Organisation of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs to head the ministry.Imad Saud, a resident in cardiothoracic surgery, said: “Before the war, al-Janabi “was a faithful servant of Saddam How can we trust him?”. A total of 17 confirmed cases of cholera were reported yesterday by the World Health Organisation in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.
The number of confirmed cholera cases pointed to a probable outbreak of the waterborne disease among “several hundreds of people”, the World Health Organisation said. Peace talks between Israel and Syria broke down in January 2000 over the future of the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in 1967.. The Israeli army said it happened during an exchange of fire with militants.* Syria said yesterday that the time was ripe to seek a just peace between Arabs and Israel, but insisted negotiations must build on the outcome of previous peace efforts and UN resolutions. A Palestinian baby died after being shot by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis. “From the beginning there is a big question mark on the road-map because Israel doesn’t want to implement it.”There was further violence in the occupied territories yesterday. “Why would I drop the right of return for refugees? It is not my right to drop it,” he said.

He has insisted all his life that he will never abandon the “right of return”, and he reiterated that yesterday. Mr Sharon called it “a recipe for the destruction of Israel”.Mr Abbas – appointed because America and Israel were refusing to deal with Yasser Arafat – is himself a refugee from 1948. Successive Israeli governments have opposed their return, arguing the influx would tilt the demography of Israel against Jewish Israelis. Today they and their descendants number about 4 million, most of whom still live in refugee camps in Arab countries. Some chose to leave; some fled under harassment from Jewish militias; others were forced out.