GRAPEVINE

By DAVID ELLIS

Iraq's Phantom First Family.

Where is Saddam Hussein hiding his wife Sajida and their several children? Conflicting reports have placed the dictator's clan in Switzerland, in Mauritania and in northern Zambia. Each location has some plausibility, the last because Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia's President, visited Baghdad in early January and has accepted Iraqi financial help.

Hell No, They Won't Go.

Switzerland was said to be abandoning its traditional neutrality by sending allied forces a rather unusual army division: a flock of 34,500 carrier pigeons. The Swiss do have such a unit, but they heatedly deny it will be dispatched to the gulf. "Our birds could not operate in such an environment," says a spokesman. "They would all fly back to Bern, if they weren't roasted by the desert heat or hostile fire."

I'm Still Standing.

Since the war began, foreign reporters in Cairo have been hurriedly summoned to the presidential palace on two occasions for what turned out to be trivial photo opportunities starring Hosni Mubarak. Why the fuss? Mubarak wanted to scotch rumors, spread by Iraqi radio and given wide play in Jordan, that he had been assassinated in a coup.

Well, It Worked for Ronald Reagan.

Saddam has employed 50 African occultists to advise him on war strategy, according to a Kuwaiti newspaper-in-exile now publishing in Saudi Arabia. Televangelist Pat Robertson has cited the fantastical tale on his Christian TV network. He has long believed that a Middle East war would be a prelude to Armageddon.

Wishful Thinking.

Already stunned by the success of allied air raids on war's first day, oil traders were jolted anew when they heard the bogus news that Saddam had been toppled by his officers. The rumor helped send the price of U.S. crude down more than $2 per bbl., capping a one-week fall of $8.

With reporting by Sidney Urquhart