Iraqi
Opposition Says Military Ready to Revolt Against Saddam
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“There is nobody left in Iraq who believes in Saddam Hussein” |
August
11 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – U.S. Vice President Dick
Cheney spoke Saturday, August 10, by videoconference with Iraqi
opposition leaders, in a display of renewed U.S. determination to see
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ousted from power.
Representatives
of six Iraqi opposition groups, joined by Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, met for 30 minutes in Washington to confer with Cheney on
plans to implement a regime change in Baghdad, reported Agence
France-Presse (AFP).
Cheney
was conferring with the visiting Iraqi dissidents from his home in the
state of Wyoming.
After
the meeting, Sharif Ali Bin Al-Hussein, who represents the
Constitutional Monarchy Movement, said the Iraqi military was ready to
revolt against Saddam.
“There
is nobody left in Iraq who believes in Saddam Hussein,” he said.
“They only fear his apparatus of terror. With the help of the United
States, that apparatus of terror can be dismantled.”
The
opposition leaders met Friday, August 9, with Secretary of State Colin
Powell and senior State Department and Pentagon officials.
The
round of talks comes amid fresh speculation that President George W.
Bush’s administration is planning an attack against Iraq, which has
been under crippling U.N. sanctions since it invaded neighboring
Kuwait in 1990.
But
in Iraq, words of defiance were hurled against the United States and
its potential strike plans.
Saddam
Hussein warned Iraqis will never surrender if attacked. Deliberately
echoing the famous remarks of Britain’s wartime leader Winston
Churchill, Saddam said in an interview with The Mail on
Sunday, August 11: “If they come, we are ready. We will fight them
on the streets, from the rooftops, from house to house. We will never
surrender.”
If
Washington follows through with an attack, “not only will Iraq be
harmed but the Americans themselves will suffer, as well as regional
stability,” the influential Babel newspaper vowed.
“That
will also undermine the efforts of the evil American administration to
keep together its coalition with European countries under the false
pretext of fighting terrorism,” said the daily run by Saddam’s
elder son, Uday.
“The
president of the aggressive American administration is entangled in
his own statements, and the delinquent clique is hallucinating to such
a degree that even their allies have begun to voice displeasure at the
comments of Bush and his gang.”
Bush,
vacationing on his Texas ranch, said before an early-morning round of
golf that Saddam is a danger and an enemy, but stressed he had no
timetable for any military action against Baghdad.
Nonetheless,
he said he would describe the Iraqi leader “as an enemy until proven
otherwise.”
Babel,
meanwhile, went on to say that the return of U.N. weapons inspectors
to Iraq, as demanded by the world body, “remains dependent on
serious measures by the U.N. Security Council, namely the lifting of
the embargo and respect for the security and sovereignty of Iraq.”
“We
remain committed to a balanced dialogue (with the U.N.), but at the
same time, we are prepared to defend our country if war is imposed on
us.”
Al-Qadissiya
newspaper charged that Bush “is making irresponsible accusations
about Iraq and using laughable lies which could not even convince
naive children.”
The
official daily said a war would be “the spark that will plunge the
region into a circle of unpredictable danger.”
Meanwhile,
Saadun Hammadi, the speaker of Iraq’s
parliament said Saturday it was still awaiting an answer from the U.S.
Congress on whether it would send a fact-finding team to Baghdad to
check if Iraq
was developing weapons of mass destruction.
“The
Iraqi parliament is still waiting for an answer from the U.S. Congress
over its invitation for them to send a delegation accompanied by a
team of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons experts,” said
Hammadi, quoted by the state's Iraqi News Agency (INA) news agency.
“The
parliament has directed its invitation to Congress... and not to the
U.S. administration and we are still waiting (for a reply),” he
said.
Iraq’s
parliament first extended the offer to U.S. Congress leaders on
Monday, but was instantly snubbed by the White House, before renewing
its offer again Wednesday.
On
July 13, the U.K.
newspaper The Independent said that many members of the
Iraqi opposition have been accused of being “adept only at getting
money out of gullible Americans.” That they are a “disparate bunch
who know more about the price of a BMW than the situation in
Baghdad.”
It
said that critics, including some U.K. MPs, claim that the exile
movement is a creation of London and Washington security services and
will do their bidding.
The
Washington Post said on Sunday, August 11, that there is
skepticism about the Iraqi opposition amidst the US administration.
“Previous U.S. administrations have themselves lost focus after
pledging loyalty to anti-Hussein forces,” said the paper.
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