Yahoo!, the world's leading e-mail provider, told Gulf News it is cooperating with law enforcement agencies without specifically addressing the reported deactivation of the Yahoo! e-mail account of Uday, the elder son of Iraqi President Saddam Hussain.

Mary Osako, Yahoo! spokes-person, said: "Consistent with our privacy policy, we cannot discuss specific mail accounts with the general public. However, I can tell you that Yahoo! is aware of the U.S. trade law."

Without commenting on the specific question of Uday's account, Osako said: "Our general corporate policy is to cooperate with law enforcement agencies when requested to do so."

She also neither confirmed nor denied the existence or deactivation of Uday's account. A trial e-mail sent by Gulf News to the email address of Uday returned undelivered as the address could not be reached for "possible forgery or deactivated due to abuse".

This followed an earlier report in London-based Sharq Al Awsat that the U.S. Treasury Department had complained against Yahoo! and Microsoft for providing Uday with an email address.

The Department had allegedly asked Yahoo! to drop the address because "he is a murderer, a mugger, torturing people and sending threatening emails through his Yahoo address".

In its Terms of Service, Yahoo! states that it collects information about its members' transactions, automatically receiving and recording information on its server logs from the users' browser, including the user's IP address, "cookie" information, and the page requested by the member.

Yahoo! did not react to questions on whether it may be possible that the person posing as Uday may have deleted his account on his own, by going to Yahoo!'s "Account Deletion" page.