Hussein believed hiding in Tikrit

TIKRIT, Iraq – Saddam Hussein is believed to have been hiding out recently in Tikrit, influencing the anti-American insurgency, the U.S. military said Monday.

Also, fresh attacks by resistance forces across central Iraq killed three American soldiers and wounded five others. And the United States on Monday pressed for a new Iraq resolution at the United Nations.

“We have clear indication he has been here recently,” Maj. Troy Smith, a deputy brigade commander, told reporters in Tikrit, the fugitive former president’s hometown and now headquarters for the 4th Infantry Division. “He could be here right now.”

Smith said Hussein is believed to be exerting some control over anti-U.S. guerrilla attacks around Tikrit. He didn’t elaborate on intelligence information leading the military to conclude Hussein has been in the Tikrit area, but he expressed confidence in the quality of the information. “Where else would he go to?” he said. “He has family and tribal roots here.”

The three deadly attacks late Sunday and Monday against 4th Infantry Division troops took place in Tikrit and at locations north and east of the city, according to the U.S. command.

The insurgents’ attacks on U.S. occupation forces averaged 22 a day in the past week, the U.S. military reported Monday in Baghdad.

In another clash, 101st Airborne Division troops in the northern city of Mosul came under rocket-propelled grenade fire Monday night and returned fire, killing one of their attackers, the division reported.

Meanwhile, officials of the American-led occupation said arrests were made in connection with Sunday’s bombing in the heart of Baghdad, when an explosives-packed car detonated short of its target, a hotel housing Americans and officials of Iraq’s interim ruling council. The blast killed at least eight people and wounded dozens. No details were given on the arrests.

At the U.N., the United States pushed for a new Iraq resolution Monday with a draft that gives Iraq’s Governing Council until Dec. 15 to submit a timetable for holding elections and writing a new constitution.

U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said Washington would seek a vote on the resolution this week.

According to the draft, co-sponsored by Britain and Spain, the Governing Council must submit to the Security Council by Dec. 15 “a timetable and a program for the drafting of a new constitution for Iraq and for the holding of democratic elections under the constitution.”

The spokesman for Russia’s U.N. mission said Moscow still wanted some changes, including an exact timetable and a “crucial, central role” for the United Nations.