Iraq Says Cleric Can Reopen Newspaper

Philippine forces are scheduled to complete their withdrawal from the country Monday. There was no word Sunday on the fate of the hostage, Angelo de la Cruz, a truck driver. The release of another hostage, an Egyptian who is also a truck driver, was promised Saturday after his company agreed to quit doing business in Iraq. But his fate was also unknown Sunday.

At the appearance with Armitage, held in the newly reopened Foreign Ministry, Zebari said the Iraqi interim government plans to announce on Monday the appointment of more than 40 ambassadors, including assignments to most Arab states. He said that "all Arab countries want to strengthen their relations with Iraq" and that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, which severed diplomatic relations with the government of President Saddam Hussein, have been sending "positive signals" about resuming those ties.

Meanwhile, members of the Iraqi National Guard, backed by U.S. troops, said Sunday that they arrested a leader of the resistance -- Hussein's cousin, the former head of his personal security force. Sufien Maher Nassiri was apprehended at his house in Tikrit with four other people.

According to an Iraqi military source, Nassiri was a commander of the Republican Guard intelligence section and had fled to Syria after the government fell. He returned to Iraq two months ago and was instrumental in ordering attacks against Americans in central Iraq, the source said.

The Iraqi justice minister, who survived an assassination attempt by a suicide bomber on Saturday, said he believed that former supporters of Hussein, and not foreigners, were behind many attacks, including the one on him. U.S. officials have said Zarqawi orchestrates many of the attacks. A group affiliated with the Jordanian claimed Sunday to have sent the suicide bomber who plowed into a convoy carrying the justice minister, Malik Douhan Hasan, killing five people.

But in an interview on al-Arabiya satellite television, Hasan said he was not convinced that Zarqawi was behind the attack. "I think Zarqawi is just a legend," he said. "I think Saddam's loyalists did these attacks."

In Hussein's home town of Tikrit, two car bombs exploded Sunday outside an Iraqi National Guard training station and at a police station. One policeman was killed.

Special correspondents Omar Fekeiki and Khalid Saffar contributed to this report.