The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) visited detained former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein on Saturday as Japan, which dispatched more ground troops to Iraq, beefed up security at hundreds of key facilities amid terror fears on its soil.
US civil administrator Paul Bremer, meanwhile, discounted the possibility of elections in Iraq for another year to 15 months as more violence saw another Iraqi killed and four coalition troops wounded in an ambush south of the Iraqi capital.
After more than two months in US custody, "two ICRC representatives, including a doctor, visited Saddam Hussein on Saturday in Iraq and were able to stay with him long enough for a physical and mental evaluation," ICRC spokeswoman Nada Dumani said from the Jordanian capital Amman.
"In accordance with its rules, the ICRC is unable to give any indication about the condition of Saddam Hussein. The ICRC, following this visit, as in the case of all prisoners, will report directly to the coalition," she added.
US forces captured the former dictator on December 13 hiding in a hole on a farm in a village close to his hometown of Tikrit, north of Baghdad.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2004

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