UK envoy says violence in Iraq to continue despite Saddam's arrest

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, December 16, 2003

UK envoy says violence in Iraq to continue despite Saddam's arrest

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British Prime Minister Tony Blair'sspecial envoy to Iraq Jeremy Greenstock warned on Monday that Iraqis unlikely to see immediate improvement in security despite the capture of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

"We think the violence could well go up as a matter of retaliation and resentment at the success of the capture. But we hope that will be reasonably short-lived and that gradually over the early months of next year some of this violence will go down,"Greenstock said in an interview with the BBC.

"I hope that in the longer term, those who want Iraq to become a free, democratic, a new state, will be encouraged and those who want to act against that will be discouraged," said Greenstock, who believed that Saddam's arrest showed the Iraqi people that the"bogeyman" was no longer with them.

On punishment of the former Iraqi leader, Greenstock said he believed Saddam should be tried in Iraq and Iraqis may understandably want him executed.

However, he pointed out that Britain was against the death penalty. "The United Kingdom is against the death penalty... so wewould have no part of a tribunal or a process that has the death penalty as one of its penalties," he stressed.

The Iraqis should take "international advice" on how to deal with Saddam and may decide to hand him over to an international body, Greenstock added, stressing that the decision has to be an Iraqi one.

On Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, the major justification of the United States-led war against Iraq, Greenstock said he did not accept the premise that Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction.

"I think in due course the story will be told, maybe he'll tellus some of it himself," Greenstock said.

The United States announced Sunday that Saddam, who had been onthe run for eight months since the coalition forces stormed into Baghdad on April 9, was captured alive without resistance in a US military raid Saturday night near his hometown of Tikrit in northern Iraq.

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