CRISIS IN THE PERSIAN GULF : Assassination Attempts, Arrests, Executions? Rumors Are Flying

Iraq’s traditional secretiveness and the current propaganda war between Baghdad and some of its Arab brother states have resulted in a flurry of unsubstantiated reports making the rounds of the world media.

The latest such report carried by world media outlets, including the Soviet news agency Tass, was a story picked up from Egypt’s Middle East News Agency.

On Thursday, MENA quoted unnamed Egyptian workers returning home from Iraq as saying there were “wide-scale arrests of military people and civilians in Iraq on Wednesday, and the arrests included tens of Iraqi army officers of mostly junior rank, in what apparently was believed to be part of an assassination attempt (against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein).”

Western diplomats monitoring Iraq, as well as Egyptian Foreign Ministry sources, could not confirm the report.

But Yugoslavia’s Tanjug news agency, reporting the unconfirmed story after it was carried to all corners of the globe and indicating it was perhaps a case of wishful thinking, put it like this:

“Independent sources in Cairo think that unnamed Egyptian workers can hardly be considered a reliable source upon which to base any conclusion of events taking place in Iraq.”

A reporter in the Tass Cairo bureau, asked about the “assassination attempt” the Soviet agency had carried on its wires, admitted it was based solely on the MENA report and there was no independent confirmation.

Other such unconfirmed stories coming out of the region in segments of the world press have included reports of Iraqi tank, troop and jet defections to Saudi Arabia, Saudi gunners firing on Iraqi jets, and mass executions of Iraqi government officials and army officers.

“We’re dealing with a very volatile situation, and Iraq’s secretiveness and bad reputation don’t help when it comes to accurate reporting,” said Peter Warg, a veteran U.S. reporter based in Cairo.

Warg gave the example of reports last week that Hussein may have executed his foreign minister, Tarik Aziz.

” . . . To report unsubstantiated rumors leads to a vicious circle, and accurate information is the victim,” Warg said. “You have to go through everything with a fine-tooth comb.”

The propaganda war between Iraq and some neighboring Arab states has also hindered accurate reporting.