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Saddam
to Kuwait: “Oil is only part of the wealth of your country,
Iraq”
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KUWAIT
CITY, December 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Kuwait accused
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein Saturday, December 7, of trying to
divide the oil-rich emirate by apologizing to the Kuwaiti people for
his 1990 invasion while lashing out at the nation’s leadership.
“The
message is an unveiled attempt to create a rift in the united ranks of
the Kuwaiti people and leadership,” Information Minister Sheikh
Ahmad Al-Fahd Al-Sabah told the state’s KUNA news agency, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) reported.
He
was speaking after the Iraqi leader apologized for the August 1990
invasion in a “message to the people of Kuwait” but virtually
accused the Gulf state’s rulers of plotting against Iraq with the
United States.
“Instead
of deliberately ignoring the strong bonds tying the Kuwaiti leadership
and people, Saddam Hussein should confirm his peaceful intentions in
words and deeds by implementing all U.N. Security Council resolutions
pertaining to the invasion of Kuwait,” Sheikh Ahmad said.
The
Iraqi leader also sought to “encourage acts of terrorism which the
whole world deplores,” he said, referring to Saddam’s praise of
Kuwaitis who recently attacked U.S. troops stationed in the emirate.
Sheikh
Ahmad said Kuwait’s policy was one of non-interference in Iraq’s
internal affairs.
Who
rules Iraq “is a matter that concerns the Iraqi people alone,” the
information minister said, responding to Saddam’s charge that
Kuwaiti officials were “conspiring” against Iraq with both Iraqi
dissidents and the United States.
Kuwait,
concerned by the Iraqi people’s plight, was keen to see the
prospects of war disappear from the region through Iraq's full
compliance with U.N. disarmament Resolution 1441, the Kuwaiti official
said, urging Baghdad to release some 600 prisoners the emirate says
have been held since the 1991 Gulf War.
Sheikh
Ahmad said Saddam’s message was reminiscent of the “political and
media campaigns” waged by Iraq in the run-up to its August 1990
invasion of Kuwait, which was ended seven months later by a U.S.-led
international coalition.
Kuwaiti
lawmakers and observers had earlier ridiculed Saddam’s message,
saying it was provocative and threatened the emirate’s leaders.
“He
(Saddam) is lying about everything,” liberal lawmaker Mohammed
Al-Saqer told AFP.
“He’s
apologizing to us 12 years later, why did he have to be put in a
corner to apologize? It’s not convincing to us,” said Saqer, who
heads parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
“The
timing of his speech proves he’s scared.” But he added: “This is
a direct threat to Kuwaiti officials. It’s unacceptable."
Islamist
MP Waleed Al-Tabtabai said he rejected attempts by Saddam to divide
Kuwaitis as a government and a people. The speech “overflowed with
lies,” Tabtabai said.
“Kuwaitis
will unite to face these threats embedded in the speech. The subject
of the existence of U.S. forces in Kuwait is not a matter of dispute
between anybody in Kuwait.
“Saddam’s
attempt to drive a wedge between the people and government won't
succeed because the Kuwaiti regime is legitimate,” Tabtabai said.
He
said he regretted the fact that a speech directed at the Kuwaiti
people made no mention of the 600-odd missing people and POWs from the
1990 invasion.
“The
speech proved the evil intentions of the Iraqi regime, which the
Kuwaitis will face in cooperation with the government,” Tabtabai
added.
Mohammed
Al-Jassim, editor of the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Watan, called the speech
provocative and an attempt to encourage Kuwaiti attacks on U.S. forces
stationed here.
“It’s
not an apology,” Jassim said. “He (Saddam) wants to embarrass
Kuwait in front of the Arab street.”
In
a message to the people of Kuwait read out on his behalf on state
television by Information Minister Mohammad Said Al Sahhaf, Saddam
said: “We apologize to God for any deed which might have upset
Him in the past and ... for which we were blamed, and we apologize to
you as well on this basis.”
The
Iraqi leader chose the day on which Iraq’s key declaration of its
arms programs was being handed over to the United Nations to deliver
an apology which Kuwait has been demanding since a U.S.-led coalition
ended Baghdad’s seven-month occupation of the Gulf state in February
1991.
The
message, televised shortly before U.N. officials received the document
that could precipitate or hold off a U.S. strike on Iraq, praised
Kuwaitis who have attacked U.S. troops on their territory and invited
all to join Iraqis in a holy war against the American military
presence in the Gulf.
In
his speech, Saddam apologized to the Kuwaiti people, while virtually
blaming their leaders in addition to the United States for provoking
Iraq’s 1990 invasion.
“We
regret all that happened to you as a result of the position you
took” in the run-up to the August 2, 1990 invasion, Saddam told the
Kuwaiti people.
He
faulted the Kuwaitis for pushing down the price of oil from 21 to
seven dollars a barrel by “drowning the oil market”; for
encroaching into Iraq’s border oil wells; and for demanding the
repayment of “modest aid” extended to Baghdad when it fought Iran
from 1980 to 1988.
“Oil
is only part of the wealth of your country, Iraq,” he said to the
Kuwaitis in an apparent goodwill gesture. “If your oil runs out ...
Iraq has resources that can last forever.”
Saddam
said Kuwaiti leaders had isolated the Kuwaiti people from the wider
Arab nation and put the country “under a direct foreign military
occupation,” a reference to thousands of U.S. troops deployed in the
emirate.
Saddam
urged the Kuwaitis to join Iraqis fighting “the infidel occupying
armies” after their leaders openly hosted “agents carrying Iraqi
citizenship” - an allusion to Iraqi opposition figures - to conspire
against Baghdad.
“So
long as the agents get together at the foreigner’s behest to harm
Iraq and the (Arab) nation, why don’t the believers and strugglers
in Kuwait get together with their counterparts in Iraq ... to discuss
their affairs, chiefly the jihad against the infidel occupying
armies?” he asked.
Such
a jihad (holy struggle or war) would enable them to “cleanse the
nation of shame” and relieve it of the “harm done to the people of
Kuwait and Iraq,” Saddam said.
He
charged that Kuwait’s rulers were “planning hand in hand with
foreign armies to harm Iraq and facilitate its occupation” by the
United States, which has threatened to oust his regime.
In
order to “please their (American) masters,” Saddam said Kuwaiti
leaders went as far as to host Iraqi agents, who in turn declared that
Kuwait would send representatives to “the conspiracy and treason
conference in London.”
Iraqi
Kurdish chief Jalal Talabani announced during a visit to Kuwait on
Tuesday that Kuwaiti officials had agreed to send a delegation of
“observers” to a December 13-15 conference in London during which
Iraqi opposition groups will try to close ranks in anticipation of a
U.S. strike on Iraq.
Ayatollah
Mohammad Baqer Al-Hakim, leader of the Tehran-based Supreme Assembly
for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), the main Iraqi Shiite
Muslim opposition group, also visited Kuwait recently.
Meanwhile,
a U.N. plane carrying the massive Iraqi weapons declaration from
Baghdad landed Sunday in Cyprus, from where it was to be sent on to
the United Nations in New York and Vienna.
The
white United Nations C-130 Hercules transport touched down at Larnaca
international airport at 9:55 a.m. (0755 GMT) after a flight of two
hours and 40 minutes.
An
AFP correspondent saw a large box, carried by two people, brought out
from the back of the aircraft and placed in a bus to be taken to the
airport terminal.
Hiro
Ueki, a spokesman for the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection
Commission (UNMOVIC), would not confirm that the Iraqi declaration,
which comprises some 12,000 pages, was inside.
But
he added that the declaration, which is expected to determine whether
the U.N. disarmament process ends in peace or war, would arrive in New
York and Vienna “this evening”.
The
respective copies of the declaration, which will be scrutinized by
UNMOVIC in New York and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
in Vienna, are to travel by commercial flights.
Iraq,
which was required by United Nations resolution 1441 to make the
declaration detailing its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons
programs by December 8, says it does not reveal any prohibited
activities.
Its
contents however remain under wraps until the U.N decides to release
them.
