Debka.com has been reporting that Tariq Aziz and the Iraqi Vice President Ramadan have fled and are in the Kurdish controlled area and are now under US interogation. Hopefully the rats are jumping off the ship, and we get more before 8PM. Has anyone heard or seen anything that confirm these reports? Brandon
Brother Brandon, I heard similar reports... I also heard reports that Aziz was shot dead in his attempt to cross into Kurdistan... no definite confirmations so far, but I will post them with sources if I get them... Candle
This is new on the web: http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=244661&lang=e&dir=news Conflicting reports about Tareq Aziz fate 19-03-2003, 16:06 The Iraqi opposition is trying to verify reports indicating that Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz may have been killed on his way to the Kurdish part of the country. Ismail Zayer of the Iraqi opposition broke the news Wednesday, interviewed for Radio Free Europe. According to BTA, Zayer expressed hope that this news will be confirmed by an independent source by Thursday. "The Iraqi opposition has reasons to believe that Aziz has attempted to escape into the Kurdish region of Iraq," Zayer said. "We have received no confirmation of such information," Iraqi Charge d'Affaires in Sofia Yahya Mahdi told BTA. "This is not true. Mr Tariq Aziz is a well-known patriot, he will stay in Iraq and he will be in Iraq till his last moment," the charge d'affaires said. He conveyed that the murder allegation is "cheap propaganda against Iraq." "They are aggressors and have no grounds whatsoever in terms of international law or the practice of international relations," the diplomat said in connection with the planned military operation against his country. "We have no concrete information about Tareq Aziz," Bulgarian Deputy Foreign Minister Lyubomir Ivanov said. "We have lost the direct channels of information from Iraq because we have pulled out our embassy officers from that country. We are now trying to obtain information by cooperating with other services," Ivanov said. However, Albawaba.com sources dismissed the news as totally baseless. Member of the Iraqi military bureau, Dr. Musaddaq al Janabi, told Albawaba.com that he had no information about the issue, indicating that he made contacts with the opposition offices in the north. "None of those I contacted confirmed the arrival of Aziz in the north," he added. For his part, member of the Higher Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Hamed al Bayati, ruled out the accuracy of the news report. âI have been with Kurdish leaders in Ankara for the past two days but non of them said anything about such news,â he told Albawaba.com.
The rumors have been confirmed false. Tariq Aziz was shown live on a news conference shown on CNN. He said that was the easiest possible rumor for him to prove false, but warned the Iraqi people to expect more misleading information as the war gets underway. Too bad, would have been nice for that rumor to be true. -Eric
Yup... by not defecting, this evil terrorist son of a bitch just signed his death warrant... we're gonna kill the scumbag Aziz within a matter of days...