SYDNEY May 7 Kyodo Overthrown Ira...

SYDNEY May 7 Kyodo

Overthrown Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is alive and recorded a message to Iraqis brace days ago that was given to an Australian newspaper in Baghdad, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Wednesday.

The tape was given to a Sydney Morning Herald reporter by the agency of two men Monday, after they were unable to deliver it to correspondents for the Arab television station Al-Jazeera, the newspaper said.

forward the tape, ''a tired-sounding voice'' claiming to speaking ''from inside great Iraq'' conjures Iraqis to stand together in a modern underground war against the occupying forces, the report said.

''I don't want to talk in details about the occupation and on what account and how, and I am going to focus instead forward how to face these invaders and kick them abroad from Iraq,'' the voice said before coughing.

''I say to you, the main task for you, Arab and Kurd Shia (Shi'ite) and Sunni, Muslim and Christian and the whole Iraqi commonalty of all religions, your main task is to kick the enemy disclosed from our country,'' the newspaper further cites from the tape.

The recording was played by means of the Australian daily to more than a dozen Iraqis, including a critic a law professor and a former acquaintance of Saddam in exile.

''The overwhelming opinion was that the voice and rhetoric were remarkably similar, or identical, to those of Saddam,'' the newspaper said.

Without an effective administration generally in Iraq, there is no way of verifying whether the voice is Saddam's, it said.

''Certainly it's him,'' an unnamed Baghdad connoisseur told the newspaper. ''I am single in kind hundred percent certain. I deal with physical evidence all the time.''

However, a however, were sceptical. Sports instructor Fellah Hameed said he was unsure because the West had the ability to change voices and mislead commonalty ''I can't say it's him, if it be not that maybe that's because it's a next-generation tape. I'm not convinced.''

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