US President George W. Bush on Tuesday welcomed the arrest of former Iraqi vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan, saying that US forces will continue to hunt down senior officials of the ousted Iraqi government.

"I don't know the facts of where he was, what was going on. I'm really pleased that we've captured the vice president," Bush told reporters in Crawford, Texas, where he is on vacation.

"Slowly but surely we'll find who we need to find. It's just a matter of time," he added.

Ramadan was reportedly captured by Kurdish fighters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in the northern city of Mosul on Monday and later turned over to US forces in the country. A US military official in Iraq confirmed the capture Tuesday without offering any detail.

(Xinhua News Agency August 20, 2003)