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Iraq States Retaliation Against Saudi Arabia And Kuwait
BAGHDAD, Feb 19 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Iraq's ruling Baath party on Monday vowed military retaliation against Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for their part in the U.S. and British strikes around Baghdad on Friday that Iraq said left three dead and 30 wounded.
"Doesn't Iraq have the right to adopt military measures against aggressors and those who grant them facilities if the aggression is renewed?" asked the party's mouthpiece, Al-Thawra.
The Iraqi leadership vowed "to face up to the aggression and step up the means of resistance so as to turn the skies over Baghdad into a hell for the crows of aggression," it said, referring to U.S. and British warplanes.
"Is Iraq obliged to pardon the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for their role in the aggression?" Al-Thawra reported that the Saudi and Kuwaiti leaderships should be "ashamed to put forward pretexts" for Friday bombings.
Iraq is capable of "taking additional military measures to respond to the American and British aggressors as well as those who support them, in case the aggression is repeated," stated, Al-Jumhuriya, a mainstream daily.
"We will no longer hide our intentions to the treacherous leaders in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, whose hostility has reached such a level that is backfiring on them," Al- Jumhuriya added.
"We will continue, without respite, to retaliate against enemy planes," Iraq's air defense commander, General Shahin Yassin Mohammad, told Iraqi television.
However, political and military analysts state that threats currently coming out of Iraq are not official because it they were not conveyed through military communiqués, but rather in official newspapers.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein held intensive talks with senior military officers who said they were determined to avenge the joint U.S. and British raids by launching suicide attacks against U.S. warplanes.
Thousands of Iraqi demonstrators rallied in the streets of Baghdad Monday for the third day against the air strikes setting fire to U.S. and Israeli flags and crying "Death to America".
Meanwhile, outside Gaza City, around 1,500 Palestinian demonstrators condemning the Israeli army's killing of three Palestinians over the weekend also expressed solidarity with Iraq, waving Iraqi flags and holding portraits of Saddam.
The crowd fired automatic rifles in the air while shouting: "Saddam, we wait for your rockets to hit Tel Aviv."
On Sunday, Iraq said it fired missiles at U.S. and British warplanes patrolling a "no-fly" zone over the south of the country.
The London Times Monday quoted Western military sources stating that U.S. and British warplanes had not come under Iraqi anti-aircraft or missile fire since the air strikes, and U.S. Central Command spokesman Major Jeff Blau declared he had no knowledge that Iraq had fired on U.S. or British aircraft.
"I wouldn't know unless we struck," said Blau. "I don't know if it took place, but Iraq threatens coalition aircraft routinely."
Two NATO members - France and Turkey - have criticized the air strikes, along with Russia, China and much of the Arab world.
France spoke of its "incomprehension and ...discomfort in regard to the repeated air strikes carried out by American and British aviation."
Turkey urged the U.S. to reassess its policy on Iraq. Russia said the raids were unprovoked and illegal, as criticism from India and Pakistan also came forward.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Abu Moussa led Arab criticism, calling the raids "a serious negative step that we cannot accept, nor understand its reasons, which run counter to Iraq's safety and sovereignty."
U.S. and British warplanes patrol the skies of southern Iraq from air bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, in addition to aircraft carriers in the Gulf.
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