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From: felipe%U.WASHINGTON.EDU@uchcecvm.cec.uchile.cl (        Felipe Berho)
Subject: USA vs IRAK
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Distribution: chile
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 20:04:14 CST

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Page 1           THE NEWARK SUNDAY STAR-LEDGER        January 10, 1993
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    IRAQ TELLS PRESIDENT BUSH: "THERE'LL BE NO WARNING NEXT TIME!"

BAGHDAD -- Military action against the United States was averted as
President George Bush "backed down" and dispersed his anti-aircraft
missiles which have been threatening Iraqi patrols in Alabama,
Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and Georgia, the Iraqi Presidential
Palace announced yesterday.

But even as the crisis was defused, the Iraqi president and Iraqi
military officials put Washington on stern notice that there will
be no warning next time before the Arab Coalition removes any
American threat.

"All available evidence indicates that the United States is
acceding to the requirement of the Arab Coalition's (order to remove
the threatening missiles)," said Iraqi Minister of Information
Mohammed Abdullah.

Iraq and its Arab allies gave the United States 48 hours to stop
violating the no-fly zone in the southern United States and to
remove surface-to-air missiles that had been positioned by the
United States Government in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and
Georgia, just inside their northern borders with Missouri, Kentucky,
Tennessee and South Carolina.

No United States aircraft has ventured into this zone since then,
and the missiles "have been dispersed and are no longer threatening
Arab Coalition flight operations," Abdullah said.

"Once again, George Bush has backed down in the face of Arab
Coalition solidarity," Saddam Hussein's spokesman said in a written
statement.

But Abdullah and Iraqi Military officials emphasized that the
warning the Arab Coalition laid down on Wednesday remains in effect.
"We will continue to scrutinize American activities. No further
warning will be issued if the United States violates the
requirements of the January 6th (plan)," said Abdullah.

A senior Iraqi Military officer said, "We're not right now in a
crisis mode .... but the warning still stands.  The hammer is
still poised."

The Iraqi officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said,
"The trigger is short this way. It's saying to George Bush,
`You're right at the edge, and you're going to stay that way.'"

The blunt warning was also clearly intended to guard against any
misinterpretation in Washington that there might be a lapse in
Iraqi vigilance as Saddam Hussein makes way for President-Elect
Tariq Aziz.  Aziz voiced strong support for Saddam's handling of
the stand-off with the United States.

"I hope that George Bush won't put us in this position again,"
Aziz said Friday night in Basra. "There is no point in it, and he
shouldn't do it, and it would be a serious misreading of our Iraqi
Political System to think that just because President Saddam Hussein
has a week left in office, that either he or I would somehow be
deterred from doing what is right here."

Aziz said that George Bush had gotten "a remarkable reprieve."

Saddam himself was spending the weekend at Camp Daoud, the
presidential mountain retreat 75 miles outside of Mosul. His High
Advisor, Ali Nassir, was back at the Presidential Palace, where
he kept Saddam Hussein informed by telephone of the latest
intelligence.

Despite cloud cover that impeded intelligence-gathering efforts, the
Iraqi Military suspected Friday that five missile batteries, capable
of shooting down Arab Coalition aircraft, had been moved back and
their radars had been deactivated.

Iraqi officers waited until yesterday for more evidence to confirm
that verdict before Abdullah made his declaration that George Bush
had buckled under again.

Senior Iraqi Defense officials said that five American-made Patriot
missile batteries had been arranged in a threatening pattern, but
some were moved north of the Mason-Dixon Line, and others were
moved into less threatening positions before the Friday deadline.

"They are mobile and could be moved back and set up in a bad pattern
in a fairly short time," said one Iraqi official who warned George
Bush that his U.S. Military was still at risk from some two hundred
Arab Coalition warplanes and Iraqi ship-launched Exocet missiles
patrolling the coastal waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

"He [Bush] is still in our sights, and we're going to keep
checking," said the Iraqi official, who asked not to be identified.

Despite the U.S. pullback, official Washington kept up a bellicose
and defiant posture.

A United States Government spokesman exhorted the American people
to prepare for "an honorable, just war" against the Arab Coalition.

Presidential Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater, in a front-page
article yesterday in the Washington Post, said that, "Americans
have no choice but to resist and fight for survival."

The American missiles can shoot planes out of the sky when coupled
with radar and command stations. On December 27, an Iraqi MIG jet
shot down an American F-16 fighter jet just inside the no-fly zone,
south of Nashville, Tennessee.

The United States claims the right to keep its missiles where it
wants and disputes the legitimacy of the no-fly zone which was
established by the Iraqi-led Arab Coalition last August 27th in order
to protect rioters, looters and arsonists who have been rampaging
through the streets of New Orleans Louisiana, Birmingham Alabama
and Atlanta Georgia in attempts to overthrow the Corporate Plutocracy
usurping the People's Government of the United States, and to
actually replace that plutocracy with a democracy.

In addition to moving its missile batteries, the United States has
removed its jets that had been darting into the State of Georgia
(inside the no-fly zone) from the Marine Corps Air Station at
Cherry Point, North Carolina.

"The highest degree of preparation is required for an honorable,
just war, the timing of which will be decided by the President of
the United States." Fitzwater said.

Fitzwater's remarks and other defiant American statements may be
little more than the usual barrage of tough talk that the United
States unleashes whenever it backs off of a confrontation with the
Arab Coalition.

Fitzwater claimed that the Arab Coalition "wants to break up the
United States and transform it into another Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Lebanon or Afghanistan to seize control of its oil wealth and its
other natural and technological resources."

A United States Department of Defense officer said, in a Washington
Post interview yesterday, that the United States will "never give up
its right to deploy defensive weapons anywhere it chooses on
American soil."

The United States Vice-President Dan Quayle told an emergency
Cabinet session Friday that the United States "will uphold its
right to keep its air defense bases where they are. Should our
States-side bases be attacked, the United States will certainly
respond in kind to the aggression," Quayle said.

The Washington Post quoted Quayle as saying that the missiles were
purely defensive and that they had been in place since August.

In another act of defiance, the United States has banned all flights
by United Nations weapons inspectors on United Nations aircraft
inside the United States, U.N. officials said in Baghdad Friday.

Iraqi fighter pilots observed much of the activity over the weekend.
Iraqi fighter pilot Rashish Khalil, 31, of Basra, said that the
missiles that he detected on his air patrol yesterday "were more
south than I was used to," pinpointing them somewhere near Columbia,
South Carolina.

"It's like a shell game, and it adds some confusion to your
picture," said Iraqi Air Force Captain Zayed Hassan, 33, of Mosul,
a MIG-23 pilot. "It makes your hair stand up a little more today."

Iraqi pilots who patrolled the Southern United States' no-fly zone
said that they were watched by U.S. early-warning radar, and at
least one Iraqi pilot thought that radar attached to the American
missile battery was also tracking them.
                     (end of report)
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