Iraq Escalates Verbal War, Tells Bush: ‘No Going Back’

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein vowed Thursday that Iraqi troops will not withdraw from occupied Kuwait, declaring in a televised “open letter” to President Bush: “There is no going back.”

In a personal lecture laden with prophesies of disaster, Hussein told Bush that “you, the President of the United States, have chosen to be a liar like the band you have selected and consider to represent the Arab nation.”

He warned that U.S. support of the Kuwaiti regime--”backward oil emirs,” he called them--puts American soldiers in peril.

“We pray to God that the two sides will not clash,” he said, “because if they do, thousands of Americans whom you have pushed into this dark tunnel will go home in shrouded coffins.”

Hussein’s message, advertised hours in advance, was read by a studio announcer as Jordan’s King Hussein traveled to Maine for talks with Bush. It contained no new initiatives but reflected President Hussein’s smoldering anger at Bush’s charge in a Pentagon speech Wednesday that the Iraqi leader had lied when he promised not to invade Kuwait.

“The man you hate the most,” the message said, “is Saddam Hussein, because of his truthfulness to his principles, to himself, and to his people and nation. . . .”

Since the rapid buildup of U.S. troops and hardware in support of Saudi Arabia, Hussein has sought by means of broadcasts and diplomatic maneuvers to turn Arab opinion in his favor. He has repeatedly denounced the Persian Gulf intervention by foreign governments but has rarely mentioned his conquest of Kuwait on Aug. 2.

At a news conference in Kennebunkport, Me., Bush said he had not reviewed the entire speech but had seen some excerpts.

“I think it’s clear that what we need to do at this point is to enforce the international law. The statements at the United Nations from many countries really say it all. So there’s no point in me responding. . . ,” the President said.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, the Iraqi leadership sought to put the best face on the peace concessions it offered to Iran a day earlier.

But Iraq’s Arab enemies said that Hussein’s vaunted army has blinked. In Saudi Arabia, the daily Al Jazira commented: “Saddam Hussein has entered a stage of weakness and confusion which has reached the point of humiliation and disgrace.”

Nevertheless, the Iraqi government remained defiant and threatening. The Iraqi air defense force warned that it is “prepared to repulse the aggression” and cannot guarantee the safety of foreign pilots bailing out of damaged planes over Iraqi territory.

In Baghdad, government and ruling-party newspapers said that peace with Iran will “give Iraq added strength and more resources for victory,” permitting the military command to withdraw 30 divisions--at least 300,000 men--from the eastern frontier to confront the American, European and Arab forces deployed to the south in Saudi Arabia.

At the same time, Iraqi press organs moved to motivate political opposition to foreign intervention in the Middle East, an issue potentially more powerful than 30 divisions.

A Defense Ministry statement called for “a popular Islamic consensus which rejects this Crusader pollution of Islamic holy places . . . to eliminate this American intervention and free Mecca and the tomb of the Great Prophet from this disgraceful filth.”

This message was aimed particularly at Iran--and may have touched receptive ears. In Tehran, where the United States continues to be the “Great Satan,” officials have adopted a split policy on the Kuwait crisis.

Tehran rejects the Iraqi takeover of Kuwait, ostensibly on principle but also because of the greater territorial and oil power it gives Iraq in the Persian Gulf region. It also fears that the invasion and Saudi Arabia’s acceptance of foreign troops on its soil have introduced a third force that will be hard to dispel.

Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani, in a telephone conversation with Turkish President Turgut Ozal, expressed Iran’s concerns.

According to the Iranian news agency IRNA, Rafsanjani drew a line between peace with Iraq, which has been received with enthusiasm in Tehran, and the invasion of Kuwait. He also alluded to foreign intervention, a political plague among the ruling clerics in Tehran since the days when the United States delivered Western ways along with support for the late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

“Peace with Iraq is a different issue,” Rafsanjani reportedly told Ozal, whose government is supporting U.N. sanctions against Baghdad. “We hold to our view that Iraq must evacuate from Kuwaiti territory so as to create the necessary conditions for re-establishment of peace and tranquillity. We believe that the problem which has been created in the region must be solved by the regional countries in cooperation with one another.”

Most Arab nations agree with Iran that the Kuwaiti invasion and annexation is unacceptable and that the crisis can be resolved only by an Iraqi withdrawal or war.

Whatever the Iraqi leader’s motives in offering peace to Iran, officials in Tehran have been quick to portray it as capitulation.

“We are happy that Iraq finally accepted the principled view of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Morteza Sarmadi, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said when Baghdad Radio announced the offer.

Iranian newspapers on Thursday hailed the surprise announcement as a “great victory for the Iranian revolutionary nation.”

Sadegh Khalkhali, a cleric who is anti-American, said that “all countries” must press Hussein to withdraw and added that Saudi King Fahd “has become like the governor of Alabama, but on Hijaz (Saudi) soil.” Islamic nations and Arab countries, he said, “should try at any cost to make the world-devouring America leave the Persian Gulf.”

Late reports from IRNA said the top political and military leaders of Iran’s National Security Council have taken “appropriate decisions” in response to Hussein’s offer.

The Iraqi leader, telling Rafsanjani that “everything you wanted . . . has been realized,” promised an immediate exchange of prisoners of war, withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Iranian territory and acceptance of a 1975 accord that gave Iran sovereignty over the eastern half of the Shatt al Arab, the waterway that forms a section of the frontier between the two countries.

IRNA reported that officials of Iran’s Red Crescent Society have gone to the Iraqi border to receive Iranian prisoners. Hussein had said that the first of the Iranian POWs will be turned over today.