Doha, Jan 18: Reports that Saddam Hussein might go into exile are "stupidities", the Iraqi president's cousin Ali Hassan Al-Majid said today. "These are stupidities ... And one of the methods of psychological warfare against Iraq," Majid, who is a member of Iraq's decision-making revolution command council, told Al-Jazeera television from Damascus.

Iraq has strenuously denied repeated reports of secret negotiations to entice Saddam out of Baghdad to avoid war.
Arab diplomats were quoted earlier this week as saying that Turkey was working on an exile plan with several Arab states.

Majid was to have visited Egypt today to deliver a message from Saddam to president Hosni Mubarak, but a source at the Egyptian presidency said his trip had been postponed, without giving a reason. Syria, along with other neighbours of Iraq plus Egypt, is trying to find a formula acceptable to both Washington and Baghdad to head off a US-led war on Iraq.

Turkey has invited Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran to a summit to discuss ways to prevent the war being threatened by the United States against Iraq for allegedly possessing weapons of mass destruction. In New York, human rights watch yesterday called for the arrest and prosecution of Majid, a former interior minister, for his role in the massacre of up to 100,000 Iraqi Kurds.

"Al-Majid is widely known in Iraq as chemical Ali for his repeated use of outlawed chemical warfare," the advocacy group said. "He was later in charge of Iraq's brutal military occupation of Kuwait."

Bureau Report