US: Pentagon officials expressed confidence yesterday that US forces will follow-up on the killing of Saddam Hussein's two sons by capturing the ousted former president, who is being stalked by a special forces unit in Iraq.
US forces in the past two years have mounted fruitless searches for three high-profile fugitives: Saddam, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and deposed Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.
"We know we're going to get to the step where we get Saddam Hussein in the future," said a senior defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, adding that the US military believes Saddam remains in hiding inside Iraq.
His sons Uday and Qusay were killed by soldiers from the Army's 101st Airborne Division and troops from a special forces unit, Task Force 20.
Task Force 20 is a secretive group assigned the task of hunting down Saddam and his sons, as well as other prominent figures from Saddam's government. It has been in Iraq since before the war began in March, and also has been involved in the search for Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.
Lieut Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq, said that "the ultimate objective is Saddam Hussein" and "we will not fail".
A defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the killing of Saddam's sons turns up the heat on the former president.
The official said US forces increased efforts to find Saddam and his sons "in the last two or three weeks" amid escalating attacks on American troops in Iraq.
"And unless you addressed the issue of capturing Hussein and former members of the regime, it was only going to get worse," the official said.
"There's a domino effect here. I think that how ever they managed to corner these guys [the sons] creates a presumption that anybody else who's at large is going to get cornered pretty soon, including the old man. Saddam might be just a matter of time," said John Pike, director of the GlobalSecurity.org defence think-tank.
The US is offering $25 million for information that leads to the capture of Saddam or that proves he is dead.
"Certainly, the US made a point out of saying that the reward might be going to someone for turning the sons in," said former Pentagon official Anthony Cordesman, an analyst with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
"People are going to think hard. I mean, $25 million, and probably US citizenship if you want it, it would be a pretty tempting offer." - (Reuters)