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Saddam Alive! 05/07/03: (Gulf Daily) Saddam Hussein is safe in Iraq preparing to organise resistance to US-led occupation forces, a close associate of the deposed Iraqi president was quoted as saying yesterday. Qassem Salam, secretary-general of Yemen's Arab Socialist Baath Party, said he had received a message from the leadership of Saddam's Baath Arab Socialist Party last month assuring him about the fate of fellow party leaders in Iraq. "(The verbal message) asserted that ... all the leadership was well and in safe places. The national (pan-Arab) leadership, including Saddam, were in safe places, and those who had left Iraq also said they were safe," Salam told the London-based Al Quds Al Arabi newspaper. "The crux of the message was that the resistance to the Americans will be tough, decisive and historic," he added, speaking from Yemen. Salam, a former school mate of Saddam in Egypt who had regularly met the Iraqi leader, said he last saw Saddam at an official Baath party leadership meeting on March 8. Salam, who was in Iraq throughout the war, said he left the country on April 12, three days after Baghdad's fall, travelling first by land to Syria and then to Jordan before flying back to Sanaa. He said Saddam had himself led a battle against US forces who seized Baghdad airport but was later betrayed by commanders of his Republican Guards who believed the war was already lost.
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