Iraq airs tape of purported insurgent leader

BAGHDAD May 18 (Reuters) - Iraqi officials aired a videotape on Monday of a man accused of being an insurgent leader who said al Qaeda-linked militants took orders from Saddam Hussein's Baath party and plotted to incite civil war.

In late April, Iraq heralded the capture of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, head of the Islamic State of Iraq, an al Qaeda-linked Sunni militant group.

Since then, the group, also known as ISI, has denied its leader was arrested and called the Iraqi authorities liars.

In the past, Iraq has announced it has killed or captured insurgent leaders only to have incorrectly identified them. The U.S. military has not said it believes the man is Baghdadi.

In the tape, aired on state television, the man identified as Baghdadi said he joined al Qaeda in 2005 and took on the al-Baghdadi sobriquet when he was chosen as head of ISI, an affiliate or umbrella group of al-Qaeda, in 2006.

The man said the group was funded by charity organisations in Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia, through private donations and theft and extortion within Iraq.

He said orders came from militants and from former members of Saddam's Baath party, which controlled Iraq until 2003 and is now banned by Iraqi law.

"It's all the same source," said the man, wearing prison garb and his face shadowy with stubble.

He said a primary aim of Sunni Islamist militants was to drive a wedge between majority Shi'ites and once-dominant Sunnis. He cited orders to do so from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al Qaeda leader killed by a U.S. airstrike in 2006.

In February 2006, the devastating bombing of the Askari shrine, a Shi'ite religious site in Samarra, triggered retaliatory attacks against Sunnis and set off a spiral of sectarian bloodshed that has subsided only in the past year.

"The aim was to foment civil strife and stoke a battle between Sunnis and Shi'ites ... as a step in creating the core of an Islamic state," the man said. (Editing by Robert Woodward)

Saudi Arabia

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