GMA can’t call Iraq’s Saddam for evacuation

Sorry, but she has no "hotline" to Saddam.

President Arroyo said yesterday that she could not call up Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in Baghdad in relation to the setting up of a crisis committee overseeing the evacuation of Filipinos in Iraq.

"We are not phone pals. I have not met him so I cannot solve the problem just by calling him up!" Mrs. Arroyo said, soon after informing retired AFP chief Roy Cimatu of his new designation as crisis manager to the troubled Middle Eastern country.

The President has dispatched Cimatu as Philippine "special envoy" to Iraq to immediately implement the evacuation plans for 117 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) there before any full-scale war erupts in Baghdad.

Mrs. Arroyo said she finally got in touch with Cimatu in Pagudpud, Ilocos Norte, where he flew immediately after the command turnover rites held Tuesday in Camp Aguinaldo, Quezon City.

She revealed this in a brief interview after she led yesterday the inauguration of the newly completed P500 million "state of the art" food plant of RFM Corp. in Tanauan, Batangas.

The President told reporters that she was finally able to talk to Cimatu over the phone and told him she decided to implement posthaste the evacuation plans of the estimated 117 OFWs in Baghdad to bring them "out of harm’s way" to nearby Amman. Jordan.

Cimatu had flown to his hometown in the Ilocos after the turnover rites installing new AFP chief Lt. Gen. Benjamin Defensor. Now a civilian, Cimatu will head the crisis committee Mrs. Arroyo formed yesterday to handle the government’s contingency plans for the safety of over a million OFWs in case of war in the Middle East.

"Roy has to make that assessment as well. It is not just the OFWs. It is all the consequences resulting from the possible attack. One of them, for instance, is the supply of oil," she pointed out.

The President was at first hesitant to tell reporters the other day about Cimatu’s new job, preferring to make a statement after she officially informed him.

She wanted to avoid a past embarrassment wherein former President Fidel Ramos only learned from media of her request for him to fly to Malaysia to talk with Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on the mass deportation of Filipinos from Sabah.