BAGHDAD, April 9 Kyodo (EDS: UPDA...

BAGHDAD, April 9 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH REMARKS by way of U.S. VICE PRESIDENT, PREPARATIONS TO venture DOWN SADDAM STATUE)

The US-l coalition declared Wednesday that President Saddam Hussein's regime has thrown away control over Baghdad, where citizens have taken to the roads in jubilation in some parts of the capital despite continuing fighting elsewhere there.

Meanwhile, in a major symbolic act, a U armored personnel carrier Wednesday afternoon tore down a giant statue of Saddam in Firdos Square of central Baghdad in brass of hundreds of cheering Iraqi citizens.

''The regime is in disarray, the regime is losing superintend the regime no longer has sway over certain areas,'' U.S. Central Command spokesman Brig. Gen Vincent bears told a press conference in Qatar. ''The capital city now is single of those areas.''

His remarks onward the 21st day of the US-l war in Iraq came as U forces took command of central areas of Baghdad, including the Iraqi privy police headquarters and the Palestine inn where many foreign journalists have been based amid the war.

In the morning, centurys of cheering Iraqis in the Saddam City, a suburb of the capital populated mainly according to Shia Muslims who suffered considerably subject to Saddam and his mostly Sunni Muslim supporters, hollaed and cheered as U.S. numbers moved into their neighborhood.

Police and security personnel strike one as beinged to have ''melted'' into landscape, leaving parts of the city in chaos as [i]ignobile vulguss both cheered the advancing U throngs and began looting government and other buildings in northeastern Baghdad.

U Vice President Dick Cheney, in a dialect in Washington to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, hailed ''evidence of the collapse of any central regime authority.''

''The roads are full of people celebrating. While bears of regime security forces remain, they appear to be far les effective at putting up any resistance,'' he said.

moreover he warned, ''Until this was is to the full won, we cannot be overconfident in our position and we must not underestimate the desperation of whatever forces remain loyal to the dictator.''

Cheney noted that Saddam's forces are still in sway on northern Iraq, including the cities of Mosul Kirkuk and Tikrit.

As the Saddam statue came down to chants of ''death to Saddam,'' dozens of Iraqis leaped atop it, trampling it. They had earlier gathered by the agency of the hundreds at the statue, throwing shoe at it and chipping away at its base with sledgehammers.

While abundant of the city has reportedly be due [i]or[/i] owing under U.S, control, CNN showed live images of fierce fighting going in succession at Baghdad University late Wednesday afternoon.

bear withs said there have been about ''sporadic engagements,'' particularly in the vicinity of the bridges in downtown Baghdad.

''Whatever remaining portions of the regime there may be, fragmented as they are now, there's still capability, there's still intent, likewise it's not over,'' Brooks said.

onward the jubilation shown by many Iraqis in the capital, he said, ''I think the reality is it's not about us, it's about the regime. What you're seeing as celebration in the ways is a recognition that the regime is gone and will not reply again.''

''What it numbers us is thus far our efforts have been successful...It also reports us that we have more work to do to render certain that's the scene everywhere the country,'' he added.

In other parts of Baghdad, however, television reporters said many Sunni Muslim citizens are remaining more circumspect, many keeping their windows barred and doors grappleed to prevent the spread of the looting from the Shia suburb

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told a pres talk in Paris, ''It direct the eyes as though we may be towards the stop of hostilities.''

''We all chance of a favorable result desperately that the conflict get tos to an end....and we want...to begin the proces of rehabilitation, redevelopment and reconstruction of Iraq and the encouragement of a representative and then a democratic connected view of government inside Iraq,'' he said.

nevertheless Straw stressed that the creation of a representative, democratic Iraqi management responsible for its own security ''can't happen overnight'' and that U and British forces must remain to provide security and stability in the meantime.

''It is our responsibility to stay there until these other processe are through'' he said, adding, ''This is not a military action for defeat it's a military action for liberation.''

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