Sahhaf: Defiant voice of the Iraqi government

Amman (Reuters): Ablack military beret on his head, his mouth fixed in a blithe smile, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf has become the face and voice of Iraqi defiance.

Iraq's Information Minister seems completely undaunted by U.S. and British successes, and often as not flatly denies what viewers around the world can see unfolding on their TV screens.

Even as U.S. troops roamed through a presidential complex in the heart of Baghdad on Monday and as tanks rumbled down streets a few hundred meters (yards) away, Sahhaf was confidently boasting to the world the invaders would be slaughtered.

"The infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad," he told reporters gathered on the roof of the Information Ministry. "As our leader Saddam Hussein said, 'God is grilling their stomachs in hell'."

Undeterred by the black smoke billowing behind him over central Baghdad, and the sound of fighting echoing around the capital, he declared the city was safe and protected.

Wearing his trademark green military uniform, with a pistol at the hip, he hurled abuse and insults. The American forces, he said, were "sick in their minds".

Sahhaf, 63, who kept a low profile before the war, has become an unlikely media star and a hero to many in the Arab world, at the same time as Western audiences gasp at his bravado.

While Iraqi troops fight in the field, the former foreign minister has dug deep into the lexicon of Arabic insults for verbal salvos to lob at the "evil invaders".

He branded the British and U.S. leaders "an international gang of criminal ...", "blood-sucking ...", ignorant imperialists, losers and fools.

He calls the U.S. and British forces flocks of sheep doomed to die in Iraq or likens them to a snake slithering through the desert that will be chopped into pieces.

Sahhaf often leaves foreign reporters astonished at his version of events, but roundly dismisses U.S. and British reports of the war as lies and "illusions".

Sahhaf firmly denied U.S. forces were at Baghdad's international airport despite television footage apparently showing them strolling through the damaged passenger terminal.

When asked the next day about U.S. reports that troops were in the heart of the capital, Sahhaf retorted: "You can go and visit those places. Nothing there, nothing there at all."

In the Arab world, where he is seen as a hero by some, Sahhaf escapes the mockery his utterances evoke in Western newspapers.

"I believe Sahhaf exaggerates a little, but he needs to do that to reassure his people," said Hazem, a 25-year-old security guard in Cairo. "Of course he knows that he is talking to the American soldiers as well, so his words are part of the psychological war that's going on."