IRAQ: Saddam Hussein was just "a piece of trash waiting to be collected", the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, said yesterday.
"Saddam Hussein is no longer bad news. He's a piece of trash waiting to be collected," Mr Powell said in an interview. "The noose is tightening but I can't speculate on how close one might be to actually capturing \."
Several countries, notably India and France, have said they would need a broader United Nations mandate to send their forces to take part in the occupation of Iraq following the US-led campaign that toppled Saddam from power this spring.
Mr Powell said he was considering whether and how a new UN resolution might be crafted but had not made a recommendation to President Bush.
He also said he did not believe the United States would need to cede the authorities granted to it under UN Security Council resolution 1483, which confirmed the United States and Britain as occupying powers in Iraq.
As US forces in Iraq kept up the hunt for Saddam yesterday, an Iraqi crowd gloated over an apparent roadside bomb attack that gutted a military truck.
"Destroy America! Destroy it!" yelled one man, as the crowd swung stones to smash the headlights of the military truck, smouldering on the western edge of Baghdad. Locals said the vehicle had hit a tripwire that set off explosives. There was no word on casualties and the US military had no immediate comment.
American troops searched for the former dictator in villages near his hometown of Tikrit after a new message purportedly from Saddam vowed vengeance for the killing of his feared sons.
An audio tape aired by Dubai-based Al Arabiya television, and which the CIA said yesterday was almost certainly genuine, said Uday and Qusay Hussein died as martyrs in a jihad, or holy war, which would defeat the occupiers in Iraq.