The U.S. attorney general said organized crime was behind the looting of museum antiquities.

COMBINED DISPATCHES
Saddam Hussein ordered that nearly $1 billion be taken from Iraq's Central Bank shortly before the United States began bombing Baghdad, and sent his son Qusai to grab the cash in the middle of the night, a newspaper reported today.
The amount of money -- some $900 million in U.S. $100 bills and $100 million in euros -- was so large it had to be taken from the bank in three tractor trailers, The New York Times reported.
Qusai, Saddam's younger son, and Abid al-Haimd Mahmood, Saddam's personal assistant, organized the removal of the cash, the Times report said, quoting an Iraqi banking official who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from Saddam's Baath Party.
Report confirmed
The operation, which the Iraqi official said took place at 4 a.m. March 18, was confirmed by U.S. Treasury official George Mullinax, who is assigned to help rebuild Iraq's banking system. Mullinax told the Times that about $900 million was taken by "Saddam Hussein's people."
It was not known where the money was taken. The Iraqi official said it amounted to a quarter of the Central Bank's hard currency reserves.
A U.S. Army Special Forces officer, Col. Ted Seel, said intelligence indicated that a convoy of tractor trailers crossed the border into Syria, but that the contents of the trucks were unknown, the Times report said.
Mullinax told the newspaper it was possible that much of the money had already been recovered. He said the roughly $650 million found by U.S. forces in one of Saddam's palaces last month might have been from the Central Bank.
The Iraqi official, however, thinks the money found in the palace did not come from that Central Bank raid but belonged to Saddam's oldest son Odai, whom he said was known for hoarding large sums of cash.
The newspaper said the billion dollars taken by Saddam was nearly twice the amount looted by Iraqis from the bank after the April 9 collapse of Saddam's regime.
Organized crime
Meanwhile, organized crime was involved in the looting of Iraq's national museum and the United States will fully back international efforts to retrieve the stolen artifacts, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft told an Interpol meeting today.
The comments came at a conference of art experts and law enforcement officials in Lyon, France, aimed at creating a database listing items looted in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
"There is a strong case that the looting ... was perpetrated by organized criminal groups -- criminals who know what they were looking for," Ashcroft said, praising Interpol's efforts so far.
Ashcroft did not say whether he suspected international organized crime -- such as the Mafia -- was involved in the looting, but other experts at the conference said they did not have any evidence of such involvement so far.
"We are waiting for more information," said Jean-Pierre Jouanny, an Interpol specialist in theft of cultural objects.
Franks says opposite
Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of coalition forces in Iraq, has said the opposite -- that the Baghdad looting did not appear to be carried out by organized thieves.
Interpol Secretary-General Ronald Noble said one of the group's top tasks was to collect and distribute descriptions of missing objects so they can be tracked down. He said such information was still sorely lacking.
"Right now we are operating only on rumors and anecdotal evidence," Noble said, adding that after the 1991 Gulf War, Interpol was able to log only one looted item into its database.
The two-day conference in southeastern France began Monday with presentations by officials from the U.N. Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Interpol and the State Department, and university experts.
Iraq's museums held millennia-old artworks from the Assyrian, Sumerian and Babylonian cultures. Ancient Mesopotamia -- modern-day Iraq -- was the cradle of urban civilization. Some experts fear thousands of pieces of art, including priceless antiquities, may be missing.
But figuring out what's missing depends in large part on the condition of written inventories from the looted museum.
Other museums
Although the catalog at Baghdad's National Museum has been kept for the most part intact, the status of inventories at museums in other parts of Iraq is unknown. And experts say they have no idea of the looting toll at archaeological sites.
Outside lists, descriptions and photographs of Iraqi holdings also help. The British Museum, for example, has provided records of some Iraqi items suspected of being looted.
A British Museum official who recently returned from Iraq estimated Monday that 30 to 40 antiquities were missing from the National Museum in Baghdad -- fewer than initially feared.
But John Edward Curtis also stressed that no one knows the status of 100,000 to 200,000 antiquities kept in storage, as well as an untold number of smaller, portable items that museum officials removed for safekeeping months before the war.
In other developments:
* The European Union's top humanitarian aid official arrived in Iraq today with a message of support for the Iraqi people and a proposal that the United Nations act as the "cornerstone" for coordinating aid across the country. Poul Nielson, the EU's development commissioner, is expected to remain in Baghdad for two days to assess the aid situation.
* After more than 100 days at sea, the launching of more than 5,300 sorties and the loss of one pilot, the USS Kitty Hawk and a pair of ships from its battle group returned home to a boisterous welcome at Yokosuka, Japan.
* Iraq's third-largest city, Mosul, named a cross-section of residents to run the city alongside the American military until elections can be held.
* Baghdad's airport is expected to be running by the end of the month, U.S. military officers say, but American planners have yet to announce when a full-scale, civilian-run operation will reopen.
* One day after coalition forces announced Baghdad police were back on the beat, many officers appeared to have abandoned their stations -- often to the looters they were supposed to catch.
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