Tariq Aziz: The face of Iraq
By Wolf Blitzer
CNN
 |
Tariq Aziz
Story Tools
|
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Over the past dozen years, I have interviewed Tariq Aziz on a few occasions, most recently last September 1, when he was in South Africa.
I was then in Washington, and he joined me on CNN's "Late Edition" via satellite. Re-reading the transcript of that interview reminded me once again how smooth of a Saddam Hussein spokesman he was. He never deviated from the Ba'ath Party line. He never gave an inch. It was vintage Tariq Aziz.
Iraq, he insisted, has no weapons of mass destruction. That U.S. charge, he said, was simply "a pretext to be used to justify the unjustifiable attack on Iraq." If the United States has doubts, send over a Congressional delegation to find out. Moreover, he said, Iraq has no relationship with al Qaeda. If anyone in Iraq has connections to that terror organization, he added, it would be the Kurds in the northern part of the country. "They are not in a part of Iraq which is under our control. We don't have any relationship with al Qaeda. I made it clear tens of times, hundreds of times, that our political system, our political ideology, is against the ideology and the practices of the Taliban and al Qaeda group."
Remember, Aziz is a very secular Iraqi Christian -- not a Muslim, and certainly not a fundamentalist Muslim.
What about the fate of U.S. Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher, whose plane went down on the first night of the war in January 1991? Aziz insisted that Speicher died in that crash. "The instrument which helps the pilot to jump from the plane was not working," he said. "If he were a prisoner of war, we expatriated the prisoners of war immediately after the end of the war in April 19, 1991."
As you must know, Aziz has now surrendered to U.S. military authorities in Baghdad even though only days before the war he had vowed that he would never do such a thing. He insisted he would rather die. Presumably, this once-proud Iraqi nationalist, who had studied with Saddam Hussein in the 1950s before joining the secular, pan-Arab, socialist Ba'ath Party, now sees things differently. Despite his earlier record of blind allegiance to Saddam Hussein, I assume Aziz indeed will talk. I also assume he has some interesting things to say though I am not sure he knows the most sensitive secrets of the regime -- namely the whereabouts of chemical and biological weapons or the current location of Saddam Hussein and his two sons -- assuming they are alive.
Aziz was always a useful tool for Saddam. Unlike the former Iraqi leader, he was a polished diplomat with good English. He was the face the Iraqi dictator wanted the world to see. This was the case before the first Persian Gulf War a dozen years ago as well as before the current war. Aziz was rewarded, of course, for his work. We saw the end product when Baghdad fell to U.S. troops. The looting that ensued included Aziz's once-beautiful villa. The trashing of that spectacular home stands out in my mind.
I don't know what the Bush administration now has in mind for Aziz. I assume much will depend on the answers he gives to their questions, and there will be many of them.
