Iraq's missile man surrenders

Lieutenant General Amer al-Saadi, scientific adviser to President Saddam Hussein, surrendered to American forces in Baghdad on Saturday.

Gen Saadi, a chemical engineer who had also studied for a while in Britain, was in charge of Iraq's missile development programme, BBC reported.

Under his stewardship, Iraq's missile programme gathered steam during the eight-year war with neighbouring Iran, which ended in a stalemate.

The general called in television crews before surrendering to ensure that he would come to no harm. Helga, his German wife, was also taken into custody.

Saadi arranged his surrender with the help of Germany's ZDF television network.

According to ZDF's correspondent in Baghdad, Ulrich Tigner, Gen Saadi said he spent the duration of the war at his home in Baghdad and decided to surrender after seeing on BBC that he was being sought.

Gen Saadi, who was probably the most suave face of the regime, insisted that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction. He told a German TV channel on Saturday that time would bear out his assertion. 

The general had taken on US Secretary of State Colin Powell shortly before the war began. He had given a point-by-point rebuttal of the case made by Powell in the United Nations Security Council for war on the country.