Salim Fakhri, a prominent exiled opponent of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, has died. He was 69. Fakhri died after collapsing at the Grosvenor House Hotel on Thursday. Scotland Yard police headquarters said Saturday he died of natural causes. ``There is no suspicion of any crime and there is no inquiry,'' it said. Newspapers reported that Fakhri was a potential target of the Saddam regime, which invaded Kuwait Aug. 2 and since has been squeezed by an international economic embargo. The Sunday Telegraph newspaper said its reporter Nicholas Farrell was interviewing Fakhri when he collapsed. Farrell said Fakhri had spoken with him before going to a meeting of Iraqi opposition groups and then returned for further conversation minutes before he collapsed. He described Fakhri as a retired Iraqi army colonel who became a liberal democrat and secretary of the Democratic Rescue Movement, which was aimed at establishing a Western-style democracy in Iraq. Farrell said Fakhri had been instrumental in engineering a coalition of secularist groups such as his and the two main Iraqi Shiite fundamentalist groups. He quoted Fakhri as having said, ``The Iraqi opposition is powerful. With time we can topple him. It's probably within months rather than years.''
