Saddam’s defiant foreign minister Aziz dies in Iraq
REUTERS
Through long years of conflict and crisis in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Tariq Aziz was his master’s voice to the outside world — an urbane, cigar-smoking diplomat who relayed Saddam’s tough and uncompromising stance to his enemies.
Aziz died Friday following a heart attack suffered in the southern Dhi Qar governate of Iraq.
In the months leading up to the 1991 Gulf War, when U.S.-led troops drove Iraqi occupation forces out of Kuwait, the silver-haired foreign minister took center stage, refusing to give ground in the face of growing international pressure on Baghdad.
In a last-ditch meeting with U.S. Secretary of State James Baker aimed at averting that war, Aziz pointedly declined to accept a letter from President George Bush addressed to Saddam, because of what he described as its humiliating tone.
Twelve years later, with U.S. forces once again gathered to wage war on Hussein — this time with the stated aim of overthrowing him — Aziz once again was defiant.
“For me, as well as for the courageous Iraqi leadership, we were born in Iraq and we will die in Iraq. Either as martyrs — which is a great honor — or naturally,” he said in Baghdad, wearing a military uniform with a pistol strapped to his belt.
Saddam, captured by U.S. troops in December 2003, was hanged three years later. Aziz, who surrendered to the U.S. just two weeks after Saddam’s overthrow, was jailed for his role in executions as well as the forced displacement of Kurds, before being sentenced to death in 2010 over the persecution of Islamic parties under Hussein.
That sentence was not carried out, and Aziz suffered a stroke in detention and later frequently complained of ill health.
Born in 1936 and with a degree in journalism from Baghdad University, Aziz become information minister in the 1970s, after the overthrow of Iraq’s monarchy and a series of coups which saw the Baath party seize more and more power.
When Saddam assumed the presidency in 1979, Aziz was appointed deputy prime minister, playing a front-line role in government for the next quarter century until Saddam’s toppling.