BAGHDAD (AP) - Saddam Hussein, in remarks televised Wednesday, said
Iraq "has huge capabilities" and is ready to face a U.S.
attack, "destroy it and defeat it." A senior Baghdad
official condemned U.S. President George W. Bush's state of the union
speech, saying it was filled with "cheap lies."
"When faced with an attack, we always put in our calculation
the worst case scenario and we build our tactics on that," Saddam
told military commanders. "We know that they are coming with
large forces of infantry and armoured units to storm our defensive
positions. But we will absorb the momentum of the attack, destroy it
and defeat it."
Saddam said the Americans have no right to attack Iraq "and
every one of them, from the top down to the smallest soldier, is
coming as an aggressor with ambitions."
"We will have long successive defence lines with continued
support of equipment," Saddam said. "Iraq is not
Afghanistan. Iraq has huge capabilities and throughout history, Iraqis
never allowed foreigners to stay on their homeland."
As the crisis with the United States escalates, Iraqi television
has been frequently broadcasting scenes of Saddam conferring with
military commanders and senior lieutenants. It was unclear when the
meeting aired Wednesday took place.
The broadcasts appear aimed at rallying the Iraqi population at a
time of crisis and sending out the message that Saddam remains in firm
control of the military and civilian leadership.
On Wednesday, a top Iraqi official took issue with Bush's address
to Congress.
"Banned weapons are not small objects that Iraq can
hide," Maj.-Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, head liaison to UN arms
inspectors, said on Iraqi television. "Iraq has gotten rid of all
these weapons."
Iraqi leaders also rejected Bush's allegation of past or potential
links between Baghdad and the Sept. 11 terrorists. "There's no
connection between al-Qaida and Iraq," said legislator Hazem
Bajilan, a foreign affairs specialist in the National Assembly.
Ordinary Iraqis, meanwhile, voiced growing fears of a new U.S. war,
a conflict one doctor saw as a "catastrophe" in the making
for civilians.
International arms inspection teams pressed on with their
unannounced rounds Wednesday, dropping in on an Iraqi missile-fuel
plant, an ammunition depot and other sites, as their chiefs prepared
to meet behind closed doors with the UN Security Council in New York.
Those chiefs, Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, reported to the
council Monday that Iraq was co-operating on practical matters in the
two-month-old inspection process, but was not offering evidence to
allay suspicions it retains chemical or biological weapons missed by
previous UN inspectors in the 1990s.
Iraqi officials said they would submit their own rebuttal to the
United Nations by Thursday, "clarifying" points raised by
the chief inspectors.
Under UN resolutions dating to Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War,
the Baghdad government is forbidden to pursue nuclear or other
programs to make chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. If
inspections certify Baghdad's full compliance, the Security Council
will consider lifting 12-year-old international economic sanctions on
Iraq.
The U.S. and British governments contend Iraq has hidden programs,
and they threaten a military invasion if, in their view, it doesn't
comply and disarm. But most other governments, including those of
close allies, are reluctant to grant UN authorization for such an
attack.
In his state of the union speech, Bush asserted that such Iraqi
weapons would be a threat to the United States, and "sometimes
peace must be defended" through war.
The U.S. president's address was not available to ordinary
Baghdadis through television or radio, but such threats are familiar
to Iraqis.
"Under sanctions, even now, the health situation for Iraqi
children is bad," Dr. Ahmed Abdul Fattar told a reporter at a
Baghdad children's hospital on Wednesday. "You can imagine if a
war breaks out. This would be a health catastrophe."
War worries are weighing on all Iraqis, said Hussein Fadel, a high
school physics teacher. "All people here are tired of thinking -
they're thinking all the time whether Iraq is going to face attack or
not," he said in English.
In his speech, Bush referred to biological agent anthrax, the nerve
agent VX and other weapon types, and said, "The dictator of
Iraq" - Saddam - "is not disarming."
The UN inspectors of the 1990s certified the destruction of
thousands of munitions containing such agents, but open questions
remain about some, because of discrepancies and gaps in Iraqi accounts
of arsenals and numbers destroyed.
The Bush administration has said for months it has
"solid" evidence such weapons remain hidden in Iraq, but it
has yet to produce anything concrete. U.S. Secretary of State Colin
Powell is scheduled to appear before the Security Council on Feb. 5 to
present what is billed as new such intelligence information.
The Iraqi deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, was dismissive.
"The accusations of Mr. Bush in his statement last night are
baseless, simply baseless," Aziz said in an ABC interview.
"Now people are more unconvinced about the Bush allegations
than any time before."
Amin, a general, said on Iraqi TV that Bush's speech was full of
"cheap lies with a political purpose." He went on, "We
deeply regret that Little Bush" - an epithet frequently used here
for the second President Bush - "is relying on lies. He knows
that Iraq has respected all resolutions."
Chief nuclear inspector ElBaradei, director general of the
International Atomic Energy Agency, said Tuesday his experts have yet
to receive any "actionable" intelligence from the Americans.
In fact, in his state of the union address, Bush revived an old
allegation that ElBaradei's IAEA concluded was wrong: that aluminum
tubes Iraq sought to import were meant for equipment to enrich uranium
for nuclear bombs.
"They're not looking for the truth," another senior
Iraqi, presidential adviser Amer Rashid, said of the Bush
administration. "What they're looking for is to distort the
truth."