by Sammy Ketz
BAGHDAD, Sept 6 (AFP) - The comedy of errors performed by Iraqi officials recounting the alleged capture of Saddam's right-hand man has plunged the new government into deep embarrassment and further tarnished its credibility.
"We all make mistakes," said interior ministry spokesman Sabah Kadhim Monday, denying earlier claims that Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri had been arrested.
"Today, I am happy to say there was a person arrested. But after making appropriate checks, it was not Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri. It was one of his relatives. He is also wanted but he is not on any major lists," he said.
Iraqi officials had retreated into a nervous media blackout Monday morning, a day after trumpeting that the most wanted member of the former regime still at large had been nabbed by the national guard.
Another interior ministry official had hailed the boasted capture of the ailing Ibrahim as a glorious achievement for the country's fledgling security forces.
Colonel Abdallah Juburi, who commands the national guard in the Saddam loyalist stronghold of Tikrit, recounted the arrest in abundant detail.
"Iraqi national guards and US forces obtained intelligence that Ibrahim was in Ad-Dawr clinic" to receive a blood tranfusion necessitated by his leukaemia, he told AFP Sunday.
"They surrounded the area and, as he was leaving the clinic, they arrested him."
Juburi said a fierce battle had then ensued between Ibrahim's supporters and national guardmen backed by the US air force which left 70 killed or wounded.
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's office announced it was carrying out DNA tests on a man who might or might not be the reviled Saddam henchman.
But a health ministry official told AFP Monday that no casualties had been reported in the province.
An AFP reporter went to Ad-Dawr and was told by a doctor at the tiny clinic where Ibrahim reportedly checked in that it did not even possess the necessary equipment to perform a blood transfusion.
National guards posted there said no fighting had ever taken place.
Juburi then sheepishly retracted his claims and said: "This is a purely American operation and they told me about it on Saturday. We have nothing to do with this story.
"His (the detainee's) relatives told him they would disguise him as Duri and turn him in in order to split the 10-million-dollar bounty the Americans promised for his capture," he ventured.
The US military had never confirmed the arrest. Commanders also stressed it was very unlikely such an operation would have been conducted without its knowledge.
On Monday night, the government finally put an end to the ludicrous 24-hour sequence of ever-changing accounts, reminiscent of Saddam's former information minister "Comical Ali".
"It's almost like after the initial stage of the war and you saw the skit of Saturday Night live, the information minister was saying coalition forces are not here," said one senior US officer.
"I was not surprised at all. Saddam's regime was built on nothing but mistrust and lies," he added on condition of anonymity.
The PR disaster also reflected a government, caught in a crisis largely not of its own making and weakened by the heritage of decades of dictatorship and a raging guerrilla war, analyst Joost Hiltermann said.
"It's a daily conundrum for Allawi's government. It wants to be seen as strong but it can't take long-term decisions. It can talk tough but it can't act tough," said Hiltermann, who works for the International Crisis Group which recently published a bleak report on post-war Iraq.
A similar incident had already dented the credibility of Iraq's fledgling security services during the siege of the Imam Ali shrine in the Shiite holy city of Najaf last month.
Government officials and police had falsely claimed that their forces had taken control of the mausoleum which had been occupied by militiamen loyal to radical cleric Moqtada Sadr and arrested hundreds of rebel fighters.
An end to the standoff was finally brokered by top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and the Mehdi Army combatants left the shrine without handing over their weapons.