One of the highest-ranking Iraqi diplomats at the United Nations has asked for asylum in the United States, the police in New York said Wednesday.
A second Iraqi diplomat, who is thought to have disappeared about two weeks ago, may also be trying to defect, said the New York Times.
The defector was identified by the police as Muhammad Al Humaimidi, the deputy chief of Iraq's United Nations mission.
After Humaimidi turned himself in to the police in New York on Friday, he and his family were questioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said the paper.
He and his family are thought to be in hiding, though neither the New York police nor federal officials would comment today on their whereabouts.
The second Iraqi, Fela Hesan Al Rubaie, who is the fourth-ranking diplomat at the Iraqi mission, has been unaccounted for since he and his family failed to show up for a flight they had booked from the United States to Iraq, the paper added.
Diplomats said both men were completing their assignments in New York, where Iraq maintains its only full-fledged diplomatic mission in the United States.
Because Iraq and the United States do not have diplomatic relations, Iraqi affairs are handled by the Algerian Embassy in Washington.
In New York, the police said they had no information on the case of the second Iraqi, Rubaie, although Reuters reported that he had turned himself in to the FBI.
Bush administration officials in Washington said that they did not know what motivated the defector, Humaimidi, to ask for asylum.
They said perhaps he was afraid of returning to Iraq for some reason, or perhaps was experiencing morale or work-related problems within the Iraqi mission in New York, according to the paper.
One Iraqi expert in Washington told the paper that Humaimidi was believed to be related to senior members of the Baath Party, which has ruled Iraq for almost 40 years.
Both men, whose high rank allowed them to bring their families with them, held United Nations jobs that would have put them at the center of discussions on Iraqi strategy, diplomats said.
In recent weeks, the Iraqis have been arguing at the United Nations against changes in the "oil for food" program.
They also repeated Iraq's vow never to allow international arms inspections to resume, the key to lifting sanctions against Baghdad.
The defections are thought to be the first involving Iraqi diplomats at the UN, but other Iraqis have defected to the United States, said AFP.
They included weightlifter Raed Ahmed, who carried the Iraqi flag at the opening ceremony of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, and Khidhir Abdul Abas Hamza, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist who defected to the United States in 1994 – Albawaba.com
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