MARCH 16, 2002:

IRAQ: Iraq Dissidents Say Officers Killed

An Iraqi dissident group said Saturday that Saddam Hussein's government executed 6 military officers earlier this month for subversion.

 The Center for Human Rights, an affiliate of the Iraqi Communist Party, said 3 of the officers had served at Saddam's presidential retreat at Tharthar, 100 miles northwest the capital Baghdad. It named the other three but did not say where they had been stationed.

 All 6 were executed in the1st week of March, the center said in a fax to The Associated Press in Cairo from its London office. It said their bodies were delivered to their families, who were forbidden to hold funerals.

 The claim could not be independently confirmed. The Iraqi government does not comment on such allegations.

 The center said the 3 officers who did not work at Tharthar were Maj. Mohammed Abdullah Shaheen, Maj. Mohammed Najib and Maj. Muwaffaq.

 A U.N. Human Rights envoy to Iraq filed a report in October saying that Iraqi citizens face arbitrary execution, religious persecution, torture and forced relocation.

 Meanwhile, as Vice President Dick Cheney toured the Middle East to gauge support for American action against Iraq, Saddam sounded a defiant note, evoking the U.S. war in Vietnam during a speech to welcome visiting Vietnamese Vice President Nguyen Thi Binh.

 "America cannot bend the will of Iraqis or defeat them. They were beaten by the poor people of Vietnam," Saddam said in the speech, which was broadcast on national radio and television.