uda News Feb 27, 2003 www.aljazeerah.info

Al-Jazeerah, News

A senior Iraqi official, whom Iraqi opposition groups said had defected was the picture of confidence at his office at Baghdad's Al Waziriyah district on Tuesday night, posing happily for pictures in a room decorated with larger than life pictures of the Iraqi president Saddam Hussain and his sons, Uday and Qusay.

Adeeb Shabaan, who heads the Arab Union of Photographers and is a close aide of Uday, told Gulf News yesterday that the whole story had been a fabrication by western journalists to blacken the name of the Iraqi regime and anyone associated with it.

Shabaan said, "I was away for two weeks on an official visit but this was with the full knowledge of the president and his son, Uday who heads the National Olympic Association."

A Kuwaiti newspaper had reported two weeks ago that Uday's aide Shabaan, who had travelled to Saudi Arabia at the head of an Iraqi sports delegation had defected to the West while in a hotel in Beirut. The newspaper quoted a Damascus-based Iraqi exile, as saying Shabaan had slipped away from a car park at the Sheraton hotel, saying he had forgotten his cellphone.

He said he had been told about the story when he was abroad, adding he strongly denied it. "It is false, all lies, a complete fabrication," he said.

"This story by the Kuwaiti paper is 99 per cent correct and one per cent false," he said. He said he had indeed headed a sports delegation to Saudi Arabia and that he had visited Riyadh and Jeddah. The Iraqi delegation had also travelled to Beirut, where he stayed on but the story was wrong in one major aspect – it was not a defection.

"I had important business in connection with the magazine Al Rafidain, of which I am editor in chief, and to choose a delegate to represent Iraq at the Olympic Association. And therefore I stayed on until my work is complete." He said he had spent 12 days in Beirut and seven days in Damascus. He returned to Baghdad four days ago, he said. "I returned to my home on Satur-day," he said.

"If it was otherwise would you see me sitting here in my office, I would be in prison," Shabaan said, adding, "I have been here for four days. If you do not believe me, I am ready to show you my passport, which will prove when I entered Baghdad."

The Iraqi official also denied he had been sent to buy jewels worth several millions given to him by the president's son. "The president's son is not a merchant or a trader who buys and sell things in a market, he is the head of the National Olympic Association. He has the wealth and the privileges that go with it. He is the son of our leader."

Adeeb also swore his fealty to the regime saying he was "a soldier" who would back the president as would some 25 million other Iraqis in the event of an attack by the U.S., whom he blamed for concocting the story of his purported defection. "They want to blacken the name of our president and anyone associated with him, he trusts us, we have worked with him for 12 years, so they pick us out and target us," he said, adding "for us there is no Iraq without Saddam Hussain.

http://www.aljazeerah.info

Opinions expressed in various sections are the sole responsibility of their authors and they may not represent Al-Jazeerah's.