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Al-Ahram Weekly 26 Aug. - 1 Sep. 1999 Issue No. 444 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 26 Aug. - 1 Sep. 1999 Issue No. 444
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Focus Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters 'Saddam will not be toppled'
By Mohamed El-Anwar"If the US were capable of toppling the Iraqi regime it would have done so since 1991," Hammam Abdel-Khaleq, Iraqi minister of information, told Al-Ahram Weekly in a recent interview.
Abdel-Khaleq explained that the United States has, since 1991, exerted fruitless efforts to topple Saddam Hussein's regime. He added that during the last few years the United States had spent more than $60 billion for this purpose but failed. "Will the $97 million [which the US Congress recently allocated for the support of exiled opposition groups] succeed in what billions have failed to achieve?" he asked.
Abdel-Khaleq also denied reports that Iraq had crushed several insurrections and attempted coups d'état by the Iraqi army or that it had executed military officers involved in these attempts. "This news is fabricated to create false propaganda. It seems that the US allocated $97 million not for the arming of Iraqi opposition, but rather to launch a biased and false media campaign against Iraq."
Abdel-Khaleq charged that by this policy, the United States seeks to neutralise what he described as the Arab masses' sympathy with Iraq. "They are trying to make Arabs and Iraqis who live outside Iraq anxious and angered over the country's internal status so that they would welcome any action against Iraq."
Abdel-Khaleq also said that Iraq is aware of the possibility of escalated military or political action against it. He explained that politically, the main US target is to impose an international mandate over Iraq through a series of proposals. Abdel-Khaleq cited the British-Dutch proposal made to the UN Security Council (which calls for the suspension, rather than the lifting, of sanctions in case Iraq implemented its international commitments) as an example of this policy. "This proposal means that Iraq will always be at the mercy of other powers," he said.
On the military level, Abdel-Khaleq said that during the last six months, the number of sorties carried out by American and British planes patrolling the no-fly zones in north and south Iraq had reached more than 11,000. "Each sortie includes a number of planes, so you can imagine the number of planes that raided Iraq. Thus we are not worried about future military action because what we are already enduring is continued and lasting aggression."
Abdel-Khaleq also accused Kuwait of attempting to hinder any attempt to lift sanctions on Iraq by bringing up the issue of its alleged 600 prisoners of war (POWs). "Whenever Kuwait feels that there are talks about a near lifting of sanctions it brings up this issue of alleged prisoners."
Abdel-Khaleq denied that Iraq had any Kuwaiti POWs in the first place and argued that "if it was in the Iraqi interest to detain Kuwaiti POWs, why did it return thousands of officers and soldiers of the Kuwaiti army as well as a large number of the Kuwaiti ruling family" who were captured following the 1990 invasion of Kuwait?
Abdel-Khaleq said that the number of missing Iraqis inside Kuwait outnumbered the claimed number of Kuwaiti POWs and that Kuwait did not exert any effort to account for them. Moreover, he said that Iraq has confirmed reports of the presence of Iraqi detainees in Kuwaiti jails. "Despite this information, we cooperated with the Arab League committee concerned with investigating the whereabouts of missing Iraqis, Kuwaitis and Saudis. But we were not treated in the same spirit by Kuwait."
Abdel-Khaleq also blamed Arab countries, including Kuwait, for failing to turn over a new leaf with Baghdad. "Iraq has called many times on the Arabs to open a new page and forget about the past so that the Arab nation can deal with the challenges it faces. We said that we are ready to talk with all the Arab countries, including Kuwait. We are also ready to discuss the 1990 incidents, but we want it to be before everyone, so that they will know why we entered Kuwait in 1990," he said.
"I advise our Kuwaiti brothers not to live in fantasies and believe that they are a superpower," Abdel-Khaleq said. Abdel-Khaleq called upon the Kuwaitis to adopt a more comprehensive approach to the future. "Can you imagine that the Kuwaiti parliament is discussing the future of Iraq. A small country such as Kuwait discusses the future of other countries and puts forward scenarios for the future of Iraq, and how to deal with it in the future. We tell the Kuwaitis that Iraq will not die, and the siege that is imposed on us will be lifted someday. So do not deepen hatred; think of the future."
