DAR AL ISLAM - IRAQ: AMERICA IS FACING DEFEAT IN IRAQ

Douri tells his followers Americans facing defeat

BAGHDAD: An audiotape said to be of Saddam Hussein's deputy said his group will keep fighting until the last foreign soldier withdraws from Iraq, saying the Americans are being defeated. The audiotape purportedly from Izzat Ibrahim Al-Douri was obtained by AP in Baghdad yesterday. It was impossible to determine its authenticity, but several Iraqis familiar with Al-Douri's voice said they believed it was his. It was also unclear when the audiotape was made but the comments referred to Saddam as a "martyr". He was hanged Dec 30 for his role in the deaths of more than 140 Shiite Muslims more than 25 years ago.

In the tape, the speaker said that the leadership of Saddam's former Baath Party declared that "its only alternative is Jihad (holy war), and escalating Jihad, until the last soldier of the enemy flees the land of Iraq." Al-Douri, the highest ranking Saddam-era official still at large, listed several conditions for an end to the "resistance," including the unconditional withdrawal by foreign forces, taking responsibility "for all the crimes they committed against the Iraqi people" and paying compensation for "all the losses that resulted from the occupation".

My dear comrades, your enemy is collapsing and is being defeated, so are its followers, agents and spies as a result of your giant jihadi march," the speaker said. Al-Douri also criticized efforts by the Shiite-led government to purge thousands of former Saddam supporters from government jobs. He blamed the Americans and the Iranians for the purge. He also launched a bitter attack against Mohammed Younis Al-Ahmad, who the Iraqi government has accused of funding and leading the insurgency. Al-Ahmad, a former Baath Party official, is believed to be living in Syria.

Earlier this year, Arab news organizations, including the newspaper Al Hayat, said that dozens of former Baath officials met in January in the Syrian city of Homs and elected a new leadership headed by Al-Ahmad. Al-Douri said that "traitor Mohammed Younis" was in Syria where the "Syrian intelligence, regrettably, in coordination with American intelligence and that of the (Iraqi) government of agents are taking well care of him and he is well treated as they prepared him to play his traitor's role against the party, the people and the steadfast resistance.

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1) Douri tells his followers Americans facing defeat