Sydney: Is Saddam Hussein still alive? Well, may be. A cassette tape acquired by 'The Age' provides a cautious affirmation upon careful analysis.

There is a better than 50 per cent chance that the voice on the tape, purporting to contain a recent address by him to the Iraqi people, is that of the dictator, according to Melbourne linguist Fethi Mansouri, senior lecturer in Middle Eastern studies at Deakin University.

The tape, handed to 'Age' correspondent Ed O'Loughlin, was a 15-minute speech with a tired-sounding voice calling on Iraqis to wage an underground war against the US-led occupying forces "to face these invaders and kick them out from Iraq".

It includes specific references to events since the fall of the regime and makes the claim, "I am talking to you from inside great Iraq."

O'Loughlin played the tape to more than a dozen Iraqis, including a judge, a professor of law and a former acquaintance of Saddam Hussein in exile. Most were overwhelmingly of the opinion that the voice and rhetoric were very similar or identical to those of the erstwhile strongman.

In Melbourne last week, Dr Mansouri conducted a number of laboratory tests on the tape, comparing it with a control sample of a Saddam speech. He subjected the tape to spectrogram and amplitude analysis and judgement by Arabic speakers and expert phoneticians.

His conclusions were that all the various analyses indicate strong similarities between the voices on the two tapes "in terms of rhetorical choices, tone of speech, accent and intensity".

Here were some differences: the speaker's pitch on the new tape was higher than normal, he had "an exaggeratedly creaky voice", and in the choice of certain expressions. But he concluded that taking everything into account, "one cannot rule out that both samples…are produced by the same speaker".

Dr Mansouri said he had chosen his words carefully in the report prepared for 'The Age'. "This (voice recognition) is not an exact science," he said. "It is not like DNA, where you have exact proof. Someone's voice is always different, depending on their state of health, tiredness, time of day and their physical and mental condition.

"So it is much easier to rule it out (that a voice is from the same person) than it is to rule it in. But I think there is a real possibility that it is him."

Dr Mansouri said the two Iraqi Arabic speakers – who were not from Saddam's home region of Tikrit – who listened to the tapes initially indicated that the first few minutes of the speech did not seem like Saddam. "But about halfway through you begin to get more recognisable speech patterns," he added.

"He falls into a melody or rhythm of speech and only then does it begin to sound like the old person."

After hearing this change, the native speakers' opinion changed significantly, both indicating, "that on the whole it is more likely than not that it is indeed Saddam speaking on the new tape".

ANI