Baghdad, June 12: Nine out of Saddam Hussein's top 44 diplomats have failed to respond to the US-led coalition's order to return to Baghdad, a senior Iraqi foreign ministry official said today. The coalition ordered Iraqi diplomats last month to return to Iraq by June 6 as it dismissed all of the foreign ministry's top personnel as part of a crackdown on former senior members of Saddam's now banned Baath party. "The deadline for their return was fixed on June 6 and at this date nine did not come back. They included Iraqi Ambassador to the UN Mohammed Aldouri," said Ghassan Hussein, the ministry's senior non-Baathist. Aldouri, the lone defender of Saddam's regime at the UN Security Council before the war, is now believed to be in the United Arab Emirates. The nine diplomats who have failed to return also include the ambassadors to Belgium, China, Egypt and Qatar, said Akila al-Hashimi, a member of a caretaker steering committee. Created in April by David Dunford, a senior coalition advisor for Iraqi foreign affairs, the committee is in charge of reorganizing and rehabilitating the battered foreign ministry. Hussein, the former head of the ministry's Africa, Asia and Latin America Department, chairs the committee. He said the new Iraqi foreign ministry would soon start consular activities in Jordan and other neighboring countries, but had no plans to issue visas. "We have to be very careful in issuing passports because many passports were stolen. Issuing visas is not an agenda at this moment," Hussein said.

Bureau Report