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Tuesday, April 29, 2003

By Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press

CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar -- Gen. Tommy Franks said yesterday that coalition forces have begun recovering artifacts looted from Iraqi museums -- thefts that sparked international criticism that the United States could have done more to protect such sites.

In an interview with The Associated Press, the commander of U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf region said over the past four days Iraqis had started informing coalition forces of the whereabouts of the artifacts.

Curators from some of the world's major museums will meet in London today to draft a recovery plan for Iraq's pillaged art works, the British Museum said.

U.S. Central Command said more than 100 items have been returned, including priceless manuscripts, a 7,000-year-old vase and one of the oldest recorded bronze bas relief bulls.

"Over the last 96 hours we have had a whole lot of Iraqis contact our people up in Iraq and say actually we know where a great many of these artifacts are," Franks said in a satellite hookup from his Gulf command post to the annual meeting of the news cooperative in Seattle.

"Over the past three days we have been collecting artifacts," Franks said.

"At the appropriate time, we'll place them back in the museums for the Iraqi people," he added in a follow-up interview after the broadcast.

Franks touched on a host of issues in the interview, including the hunt for weapons of mass destruction, plans to reorganize the U.S. military presence in the Gulf, and the status of Saddam Hussein and his sons.

"Today I don't know whether Hussein and his sons are alive or dead," Franks said.

However, he added: "I have seen nothing over the last week or two that convinces me that he is alive."

On the military presence in the region, Franks said that with the collapse of the Iraqi leadership, he suspects there will be some "reorientation and some reorganization" of U.S. forces in the Gulf.

Specifically, he said the United States no longer needs to fly aircraft out of Turkey and Saudi Arabia to patrol the northern and southern no-fly zones over Iraq.

He said the hunt for banned weapons continues at 950 to 1,000 sites around Iraq, but said he didn't know if about a dozen 55-gallon drums found near Baiji north of Baghdad contained any.