News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Iraq Claims Speicher Dead

Date: January 15, 2001

"Iraq Says U.S. Gulf War Pilot Dead
By Hassan Hafidh

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq said Sunday a U.S. pilot shot down during the 1991 Gulf War was dead and accused the United States of trying to provoke a new crisis with Baghdad.

The U.S. Navy changed the status of Lt. Comdr. Michael Scott Speicher, who was shot down over Iraq early in the Gulf War, from "killed in action" to "missing in action" because of what it says was evidence he may have survived the crash.

Speicher became the first American lost on the first day of the air war when his Navy F-18 attack jet was apparently hit and crashed in a fireball during a battle with Iraqi jets on January 17, 1991.

"The American authorities...have announced a new lie concerning an American pilot in order to create a new problem with Iraq," an Iraqi Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

"Iraq returned all American prisoners of war in March 1991. If there was such a pilot, as claimed by the American authorities, why did they not ask for his release at the time," the spokesman said in a statement carried by the Iraqi News Agency.

The spokesman said a search for the pilot was carried out by an 11-strong U.S. team in Iraq in December 1995 and found a flight suit which belonged to Speicher and some wreckage of his plane in a desert area.

"A week of search led to recovering the pilot's suit without his remains and some other things which proved to the team that the pilot was killed," he said.

He said Iraqi Bedouins had taken part of the wreckage and used it as signposts to mark a way in the desert.

Earlier U.S. defense officials said Pentagon documents showed that U.S. spy satellites more than three years after the crash had detected "a man-made symbol" at the crash scene. They declined to give details.

President Clinton told reporters on Friday: "We are going to do our best to find out if he is alive and if he is, to get him out."

"This is a vicious conspiracy being hatched by the American administration for political purposes," the Iraqi spokesman said.

In 1990, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ordered an invasion of neighboring Kuwait, triggering the Gulf War in which the United States led an allied force against Iraq."