- (AFP) -- President Saddam Hussein said Iraq was ready
to face up to any US military campaign, as his US counterpart George W.
Bush stepped up pressure for a tough new UN resolution on disarmament.
-
- "We are preparing ourselves as if >war were to
take place in one hour. We are psychologically ready," the Iraqi leader
told Egyptian weekly Elosboa in a rare interview.
-
- "We are thus prepared for war," Saddam said
Sunday, warning the United States that "Iraq will never be like Afghanistan".
-
- "That is not to say that we are stronger than the
United States, which has fleets and long-range missiles. But we have our
faith in God, the homeland and the Iraqi people as well as the Arab people."
-
- A war "will never be a cakewalk for US and British
soldiers," the Iraqi strongman warned in the interview, held in one
of his Baghdad palaces and published on the weekly's www.elosboa.com website.
-
- "The Arab people are not, as some think, in a deep
sleep.
-
- "The protests in the Arab world and the West, gathering
hundreds of thousands of pacifists opposed to a war on the Iraqi people,
challenge the wish of the Zionist right and extremists in Washington to
destroy Iraq."
-
- At a campaign rally in Atlanta, Georgia on Saturday,
President Bush stepped up pressure for a new British-supported UN resolution
that would set tough new conditions for starting UN weapons inspections
in Iraq.
-
- France, Russia and China, the remaining permanent members
of the council that have veto power, oppose the text because of "hidden
triggers" for the automatic use of military force against Iraq.
-
- "The message to this august body is to be effective,"
Bush said, remaining tight-lipped on a deadline for any resolution.
-
- Earlier Saturday, Paris "categorically" denied
a report by the Saudi-owned daily Asharq al-Awsat that a French envoy had
been shuttling to Baghdad for months in a bid to remove any pretext for
US-led military action to oust Saddam.
-
- Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, visited the
French pavilion at the Baghdad international fair on Sunday, praising Paris's
stance at the United Nations.
-
- "The politics of the United States aims at controlling
the region's oil to extend its hegemony over the world. Those who apply
the US policy will be the first losers," he said.
-
- Arab League chief Amr Mussa, meanwhile, called for a
"just and reasonable" UN resolution which "must be aimed
first and foremost at helping the inspectors (disarm Iraq) and not create
obstacles".
-
- The secretary general of the 22-member pan-Arab organisation
said in Amman he was opposed to the imposition of a regime change in Iraq,
stressing that such an issue "is strictly an Iraqi decision which
we don't intervene in."
-
- In London, the Sunday Telegraph reported that Saddam
had instructed agents to kill Iraqi opposition leaders based in Britain
to prevent them from forming an alternative government if he is overthrown.
-
- British and US intelligence officials have received information
in the past week that Saddam has issued a presidential decree authorising
the murder of leading members of the Iraqi opposition "by any means
necessary."
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