Garner Meets Iraqi Leaders, US Holds More Old Guard

Baghdad (Reuters): U.S. forces captured four more senior members of Saddam Hussein's old guard as Washington's administrator for Iraq met on Thursday with some of the country's prospective leaders.

The fugitives, from the U.S. list of 55 most wanted Saddam associates, were taken into custody before Jay Garner, the retired general overseeing the rebuilding of Iraq, started talks with prominent Iraqis at a Baghdad "town hall" meeting.

Among those held was the commander of Iraq's air defenses. No. 10 on the list, he is the highest ranking prisoner yet and the queen of diamonds in a pack of "most wanted" cards issued to U.S. troops.

Muzahim Sa'b Hassan al-Tikriti was "under coalition control," the U.S. military said, giving no further details.

General Zuhayr Talib Abd al Sattar al Naqib, Saddam's chief of military intelligence, gave himself up in Baghdad on Wednesday and U.S. special forces captured Salim Sa'id Khalaf Al-Jumayli, former head of Iraqi intelligence's American desk.

Naqib, No. 21 on Washington's list, told the Los Angeles Times before turning himself in to U.S. soldiers that he was a military man who had simply followed orders. He denied he had done anything that could be counted as a crime against humanity.

"What is their proof that I am a war criminal?" he said.

Trade minister Muhammad Mahdi al-Salih, No. 48 on the list is also in U.S. custody, bringing to 11 the number to have surrendered or been captured. Three others are dead.

"They're collapsing like a house of cards," said Lieutenant Colonel Tom Kurasiewicz, a Pentagon spokesman.

The whereabouts of Saddam and his two sons, Uday and Qusay, are still a mystery.

Garner held the meeting with prominent Iraqis at a conference center close to Saddam's bombed out main palace complex.

His deputy, British general Tim Cross, told reporters beforehand that Iraqis must be allowed to vent their fury after decades of Saddam's iron rule, but he did not want to see this develop into a fundamentalist religious government.

Iraq's long oppressed Shi'ite majority, some of whose leaders found refuge in Iran's Islamic republic while Saddam was in power, put on an impressive display of organization this week when they marshalled a million or more pilgrims through the holy city of Kerbala.

Garner, head of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), invited selected Iraqis who have shown leadership qualities to the meeting, Cross said.

Cross declined to give names of participants and said he did not know if they included Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, a favorite of Washington.

"Will he be part of the process? Yes, because he has a legitimate part to play like anybody else who feels they want to play a part in the future of Iraq," Cross said.

The meeting, held under heavy security with tanks and other armored vehicles ringing the venue, followed anti-American demonstrations in Baghdad by members of the country's Shi'ite majority, who have demanded that the U.S.-led troops who ousted Saddam two weeks ago get out of the country..

"We have got to allow a period of time where people who have not been able to say anything publicly are allowed to get on the street and vent a bit of fury," Cross said.

"Clearly there are dangers. Of course there are and I do not want to see Iraq become a fundamentalist state," he said.

"There is bound to be a period where people are flexing their muscles, getting on to the street, getting their people together, in essence forming political parties, political views."

Cross said he did not believe all of Iraq's Shi'ites wanted a clerical government like neighboring Shi'ite Iran.

Washington has warned Tehran against interfering and the U.S. military's Central Command said Marines had begun patrolling the Iranian border in northeastern Iraq this week.

"We've made clear to Iran that we would oppose any outside interference in Iraq's road to democracy," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "Infiltration of agents to destabilize the Shi'ite population would clearly fall into that category."

The United States believes Iranian-trained agents have crossed into southern Iraq since the fall of Saddam and are working to advance Iranian interests.

"Right now, the Shi'ites and any Iranian-influenced Shi'ite actions are not an overt threat to coalition forces. But we are watching all of these competing interests," Lieutenant General David McKiernan, U.S. land forces commander, said in Baghdad.

In Tehran, Iraqi Shi'ite leader Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim told Reuters he was ready to work with the United States and others to establish stability in his homeland.

Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and one of the most powerful forces among Iraq's Shi'ites, said the Kerbala pilgrimage showed Iraqis were able to govern themselves, but there was no direct parallel between Iraq and Iran's Islamic republic.