Former Iraqi general put under house arrest

COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- A former Iraqi army chief of staff -- who has predicted Saddam Hussein would be ousted by March -- was placed under house arrest in Denmark for planning to leave the country for Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq,

Ironically, Gen. Nizar al-Khazraji, who fled Baghdad in 1995 and became Iraq's highest ranking military defector, was held in Denmark for investigation of allegations he had a role in a 1988 poison gas attack on Kurds in the north.

Despite a deeply divided Iraqi opposition, some groups have looked to al-Khazraji as a unifying figure as the United States tries to organize the Iraqi diaspora and the Kurds for Saddam's ouster or for help with a U.S.-led attack to remove the Iraqi dictator.

"I have to meet several opposition leaders, dissident officers and politicians," al-Khazraji said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Al-Khazraji is believed to enjoy support within the army and, as a Sunni Muslim, is well-placed to take control. The Sunni minority has dominated Iraq since the country's independence in 1922.

Those attributes -- and his habit of staying out of squabbles within the Iraqi opposition community -- have led some to suggest he is Iraq's equivalent of Hamid Karzai, leader of the interim government of Afghanistan.

Al-Khazraji, a hero of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war who was fired by Saddam in 1990 for criticizing the invasion of Kuwait, has lived in Denmark since 1999. He was caught trying to leave the country earlier this week.

Late Tuesday, a court in al-Khazraji's town of Soroe, 60 miles southwest of the capital, Copenhagen, issued the house arrest order, forcing the 63-year-old general to seek permission to leave his four-room apartment and report regularly to police.

Under the Geneva Conventions, which calls for countries to prosecute or expel war criminals, Denmark is obliged to investigate claims al-Khazraji had a role in the poison gas attack, said Joern Vestergaard, an international law expert with the Copenhagen university.

Prosecutor Birgitte Vestberg, head of the newly created office for special international criminal cases, said she was looking into whether al-Khazraji could be charged with crimes against humanity and violating the Geneva Conventions. Denmark opened the inquiry in 2001. If convicted, the general faces life in prison.

Vestberg said al-Khazraji was arrested because he had applied for a passport to travel to Saudi Arabia as a means of getting to Kurdish northern Iraq. "Thereby he would have avoided a criminal investigation."

After being place under house arrest, the former chief of staff complained the action would keep him from meeting with opposition figures next month in London. The gathering has been delayed by internal bickering and rivalries among Iraqi opposition groups and was moved from its planned location in Belgium after authorities created difficulties with visas.

"I have been without a passport and I do need to travel," al-Khazraji told AP. "I want to travel to see my friends and my colleagues abroad and I want to attend meetings and conferences, but I am unable to move because I am ... restricted."