SADDAM URGES WAR ON ISRAEL IN CHRISTMAS MESSAGE
Dec. 24, 2000-Reuters-BAGHDAD -- Iraqi President Saddam Hussein called in a Christmas message on Sunday for Arab Muslims and Christians to launch a holy war on Israel. Saddam accused Israel of defiling Muslim and Christian sanctuaries and of wanting to exterminate Palestinians, with the backing of the United States. "Principles of Islam and the teachings of Jesus Christ make it imperative on us to take the road that satisfies God and our conscience...that is the road of Jihad (holy war)," he said. "Without Jihad we will not realise what we are hoping for in achieving peace and justice and saving humanity from the evils of the criminals, the murderers," he added. Earlier, Saddam urged Palestinians to continue their uprising against Israel and to ignore "short-sighted political solutions" sponsored by the United States. At least 343 people, most of them Palestinians, have been killed in a Palestinian uprising that began almost three months ago. Thirty-nine Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs also have been killed. Iraq has always taken a hard line towards Israel and fired Scud missiles at the Jewish state during the Gulf War. It also opposes peace agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinians and those signed with neighbouring countries. [Source: http://www.sun- sentinel.com/news/daily/detail/0,1136,36000000000148880,00.html ]
IRAQ READY TO TAKE ON ISRAEL, SAYS SADDAM
January 5,2001 - BAGHDAD (Iraq) -- Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said on Thursday that his people were ready to 'liberate' Palestine from the Israelis and fight once more against the United States. 'The Iraqi people are dying to fight, and it's not just Saddam Hussein but seven million Iraqis who have volunteered, who want to fight to liberate Palestine,' President Saddam told a group of Arab artists.
'The Iraqi people are ready to fight the Americans and those who fight alongside the Americans,' he added, in remarks broadcast over state television. 'Israelis aren't able to resist the Arabs. They are not able to resist Arab countries or even one sole country,' he said, adding that the Iraqi people were 'determined to face' the UN embargo in place against Iraq since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait...
It was the second straight night of state television broadcasts of Saddam Hussein, after Iraqi opposition groups alleged the Iraqi leader was seriously ill or dead. [In another report it was stated that Saddam has cancerous, ulcerated feet and has a hard time standing on them.] Earlier, Iraqi Defence Minister General Sultan Hashem Ahmad said that his country was ready to take on Israel in the event of a Middle East war and did not rule out a new confrontation with Washington.
He said that 'a surprise attack is possible at any time,' especially as Iraq was embroiled in almost daily clashes with US and British warplanes which enforce 'no-fly' zones over most of the country. 'The Iraqi army, which is at the head of the armies in the region, is capable of facing up to the US military technology,' Mr Hashem told the Iraqi weekly Al- Zawra.Turning to Israel, Mr Hashem said that if the Jewish states 'ventures' to start a war in case of a total collapse of the US-sponsored Middle East peace process, 'the Iraqi leadership will send troops to defend the Arabs.'
'We are ready to execute the orders of our command at any time and have taken the necessary measures to support our Arab brothers if they are the target of aggression,' he said. In a show of force almost 10 years after Iraq's ouster from Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War, the army staged a huge military parade on Dec 31. The parade was trumpeted as a show of support for the Palestinians in their conflict with Israel. -- AFP [Source: http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/breakingnews/story/0,1895,15306,00.html? ]
SYRIA JOINS IRAQ, IRAN AGAINST ISRAEL
By MARTIN SIEFF, UPI Senior News Analyst - WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 (UPI) -- Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.For years, if not decades, many U.S. and Israeli foreign policy columnists regularly lamented that only the "lack of vision" -- or courage, or anything you want to imagine -- of Syrian President Hafez Assad was preventing Syria taking the "historic opportunity" of making peace with Israel.
Last year, tough old Assad, who had held Syria in an iron grip for a full 30 years, finally died, to be succeeded by his mild-mannered, Western-educated son Bashar, an eye-doctor by profession and an enthusiastic exponent of the economic wonders of the Internet.
Surely, progressive, forward-looking young Bashar, so many of the Western experts and columnists said, would abandon the repressive, paranoid old ways of his father and lead his country out into a bold new era of engagement with the outside world. And indeed, he has. But not the way they expected.
Bashar has launched a new era of Syrian foreign policy all right, but one that is on a collision course for war, not peace, with Israel; for confrontation, not engagement, with the United States; and for close military cooperation with Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq, not rejection of him.
Commercial air links are being resumed between Damascus and Baghdad for the first time in nearly 20 years. Iraq has responded by giving Iran permission to over-fly its territory when sending air shipments of arms and ammunition to the Iran and Syrian-backed Hezbollah (Party of God) Shiite militia in southern Lebanon.
Bashar, Middle East intelligence sources told UPI, played the key role in brokering this agreement. They also said that Bashar is working hard to achieve a rapprochement between historic enemies Iraq and Iran. Between 1980 and 1988 they fought the bloodiest war in modern Middle East history in which half a million people, at least three-quarters of them Iranians, died.
Bashar has even given the go-ahead for close military cooperation with Iraq. This involves, the sources said, joint planning for a coordinated response in the event of war with Israel.
Iraq has moved one of its few and precious armored division in recent weeks to the border with Syria, not to threaten Syria, but to be able to respond quickly in support of Damascus if hostilities erupt between Syria and the Jewish state. Late last year, Syria and Iraq, with no publicity, held joint military maneuvers, the first in their modern history.
The new spirit of cooperation extends to economic affairs as well. Iraq and Syria hope this month or next to reopen a major oil pipeline from the northern Iraqi oil fields through Syrian territory to the Lebanese Mediterranean port of Tripoli. It has not been used since 1982. Already, Syrian and Iraqi technicians are at work on the pipeline. In fact, Iraqi oil is already being refined in the Syrian city of Banias, the Middle East sources said.
Bashar, one of the Middle East intelligence sources said, "has definitely embraced" a radically new concept for Syria. He has clearly approved a new strategic doctrine of cooperation with Iraq, Syria's historic regional rival, as well as with Iran, to create a powerful regional block of Iran, Iraq and Syria opposed to Israel and the United States.
This move is a radical reversal of the cautious policies of Bashar's father for a full 30 years. Hafez Assad fought two fierce wars with Israel within six years. First, he directed Syrian forces in the 1967 Six day War, when he was Syria's minister of defense. Then, as president, he launched the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when his tough, massive tank army caught the Israelis by surprise and nearly swept them off the Golan Heights and across the Galillee to the Mediterranean before being held and rolled back.
But after that, Assad followed a policy of more than 25 years of trying to avoid any outright direct conflict with the Israeli Army. Since the 1975 Israeli-Syrian disengagement agreement, not a single Israeli soldier or settler on Golan has been killed by direct Syrian action. In fact, Hafez Assad's greatest enemies were two fellow revolutionary Arab leaders of his own generation, Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and President Saddam Hussein of neighboring Iraq. Syria and Iraq have always been rivals for the leadership of the Arab world, especially in the Fertile Crescent region they share. But ideological rivalries over the past 40 years have made things far worse. Both Saddam and Hafez Assad claimed to preside over the only true, ideologically pure regime of Baathism, or Arab Socialism.
Hafez Assad always deeply distrusted and feared Saddam. Iraq has almost double Syria's population and vast oil wealth. When the United States mobilized a vast coalition and assembled a huge army of 700,000 men to roll Iraq out off Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War, Hafez Assad joined them.
Reversing this historic policy carries enormous risks for Bashar Assad. But it has major attractions to him as well. The main risks are that he could blunder into a major war with israel and that this time, unlike 1967 and 1973, Syria could be totally smashed. Then Bashar's Baathist regime, dominated by the Assad family's own Alawi religious sect concentrated around the mountainous western Syrian city of Latakia, could be swept from power. Or, by allowing the Iraqi military and security services to operate freely in Syria -- a policy that was anathema to his father -- Bashar could leave himself vulnerable to being toppled and killed in a coup plot orchestrated by Saddam.
But with all its risks, the policy of strategic alliance with Iraq also has many advantages for Bashar. It is popular with the hawkish Alawite Baathists who dominate Syria's army and security services. They are filled with frustration at their inability to win a chance for military revenge against Israel, Middle East intelligence source say. And they are strongly supportive of this policy.
Also, having been raised from childhood on the radical, anti-American ideology of Baathism, they want to expel the United States and its allies from the region, not come to terms with them.
A strong anti-U.S. and anti-Israel policy is also popular with Syria's Sunni Muslim majority, especially the radical fundamentalists among them. Hafez Assad slaughtered at least 10,000 of these people - possibly as many as 30,000 -- along with their families in 1982 when he used tanks and heavy artillery to literally flatten the city of Hama when it was in a state of insurrection, controlled by the Ikhwan, or Muslim Brotherhood.
Now Bashar, like his father before him, must take especial pains not to offend Muslim religious leaders, especially radical ones, to avoid reopening that deadly old feud. Finally, the policy of going radical and lining up with Saddam is also popular with Iran, which now fears the United States far more than it fears Iraq. It is also welcome to Hezbollah.
If Bashar instead had sought peace with Israel and closer ties with the United States, he would have risked being undermined, or even assassinated by Hezbollah and the Iranians. In many respects, Bashar's policy is a product of weakness, not strength. Hafez Assad was strong enough to keep Saddam at arms length. Bashar is not. Hafez was strong enough to resist calls for a more radical, but risky policy towards Israel from his own generals and security chiefs. The young, inexperienced Bashar cannot afford to alienate them. Hafez could defy Iran on occasion. Bashar does not yet dare to.
For decades, U.S. and Israel analysts complained about Hafez Assad's supposedly baleful influence in the Middle East. Very soon, they may have cause to wish it was still there. Copyright 2000 by United Press International. All rights reserved. -- http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=149556
Iraq to host first Arab ministerial meeting in a decade
- MINISTERS OF THE 10 MEMBER ARAB STATES DECIDED
TO HOLD THEIR NEXT MEETING IN BAGDAD December 07, 2000, BAGHDAD (AFP English) - A group of Arab trade ministers decided Wednesday to meet in Iraq next year for the first Arab ministerial meeting there since the invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi troops in 1990, Iraq’s trade minister said.
Ministers of the 10 member states of the Arab League’s committee for economic unity unanimously decided to hold their next meeting in Baghdad from June 6 to 7, 2001, Iraqi Trade Minister Mohammed Mahdi Saleh told AFP.
A League official who asked not to be identified said the decision "reflects the solidarity of the member states with Iraq." Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Mauritania, the Palestinian Authority, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen are the 10 members of the committee. The Arab League has a total of 22 member states.
Iraq, meanwhile, persuaded Egypt and Libya to agree in principle to announce a free trade zone between the three countries. Saleh said Iraq wants the prime ministers of the three countries to sign such an agreement.
[Source: © 2000 AFP http://www.arabia.com/article/0,1690,News|34940,00.html ]
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