PARIS, April 16 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The U.S. occupation of Baghdad is the result of eight-hour tough negotiations held by the members of the Iraqi regime, who decided to give up Baghdad to the U.S. in return for providing safe haven for the Iraqi president and his top aides, an Iraqi diplomat in Paris told IslamOnline.net, but refused to be named.

“The Americans ensured the safety of Saddam Hussein and helped him leave Baghdad,” the diplomat said.

On the whereabouts of the Iraqi president, the diplomat said: “It is still unknown…Saddam left Iraq for an unknown destination.”

Asked about the reasons that drove the Iraqi regime to give up Baghdad, he said that the “scenario of giving up the city to the enemy was drawn up even before the U.S.-led war,” noting that Saddam’s mistrusted his elite Republican Guard.

“He was also fully aware of the fact that the Americans would take Baghdad sooner or later,” he asserted.

“Some Iraqi military units in Basra received orders that it was not worth fighting off the U.K. troops,” he said.

On the gritty resistance that was put up by some Iraqi fighters, the diplomat said those fighters defied orders and took up their arms to fight off the U.S.-led troops.

“As for the Arab volunteers, they were in the dark and found themselves all of a sudden alone in the battlefield after Iraq’s regular troops had taken to their heels,” he added.

The disappearance of the Iraqi army in Baghdad, no doubt, has become the troubling question now and the talk of many people, who believe that the Iraqi army vanished into thin air.

On April 9, Mohammed Abdul Salam, a military expert at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPS), told IslamOnline.net that “the cakewalk entrance of the U.S. troops into the heart of Baghdad” can be explained in accordance with three likely scenarios.