Mystery: Aldouri Won't Return to Baghdad

He told reporters repeatedly that the time had come to return home to Baghdad to be reunited with his wife and son.

Aldouri however never officially vacated his U.N. post and is still legally Iraq's U.N. ambassador even today.

Aldouri left NYC "on home leave" aboard an Air France flight to Paris where he then transited to a connecting flight to Damascus.

U.N. diplomats tell NewsMax he was able to make contact (presumably by telephone) with his family in Iraq. Aldouri though made no attempt to transit to Baghdad as he said he would try to do when he left NYC.

Instead, Aldouri went on to Amman for several days. It is not clear what exactly he did while in the Jordanian capital. Some of the ambassador's friends thought he would try to go to Baghdad from Amman.

Instead, the Iraqi ambassador travelled to the Gulf state of Dubai, where he remains today.

U.N. diplomats tell NewsMax they have not heard when or if Aldouri will return to Baghdad anytime soon.

It is also unclear why he chose to settle in Dubai and how long he intends to remain there.

There is speculation in diplomatic quarters as to whether there may have been factors other than a family reunion for Aldouri's departure from U.N. headquarters. None would specify what those factors may have been.

The U.S./U.N. mission says they have not tracked the Iraqi ambassador since he left New York.

Since Aldouri's departure from the UN, Iraq's official diplomatic residence on the Upper East Side has been occupied by Baghdad's former U.S. and U.N. ambassador Nizar Hamdoon.

Most recently, Hamdoon was a senior advisor to Deputy Prime Minister Aziz until early 2002, when he retired from active service.

Aziz, surrendered to Coalition forces in Baghdad last month.

The White House has said little about Aziz since his surrender, though President George W. Bush recently told reporters that the former Iraqi official "has yet to learn how to tell the truth."

Before his U.N. posting in the mid 1990's, Hamdoon was ambassador to Washington in the late 1980's where he was widely known to be a protege of and private troubleshooter for Saddam Hussein. It was a relationship he openly spoke of in a meeting with NBC News executives in November 1993.

He was also close to former Iraqi foreign minister and most recently information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf.

Al-Sahaf is one of the 55 most wanted by the Coalition and still remains at large.

Hamdoon, it is confirmed by the Iraqi U.N. mission, has made periodic trips to NYC on a special medical visa to receive cancer treatments at the Sloan-Kettering Hospital.

In a recent conversation, Hamdoon said that he has kept abreast of developments in Iraq but added he has had no contact with the former Iraqi leadership since the U.S./UK invasion.

Note: In a sign of the times, diplomats who remain at Iraq's U.N. mission have quietly begun removing all symbols of the previous regime.

Portraits and photos of Saddam Hussein, once prominently displayed are now nowhere to be found.

One Iraqi diplomat jokingly asked, "How much would such items be worth on Ebay?"