Hussein Plays TV Host for Uneasy ‘Guests’

A smiling and joking Iraqi President Saddam Hussein made a bizarre television appearance Thursday with a few dozen uneasy-looking Western hostages, many of them children, explaining to them that he is keeping them as “guests” in his country to prevent war.

Hussein tried to present a sympathetic, avuncular face to the world, patting the heads of the children affectionately and reassuring the hostages that they will ultimately be regarded as “heroes of peace.” However, his attempt at softening his image drew expressions of disgust and contempt from U.S. and British government officials.

Western analysts said the broadcast was designed to increase Hussein’s leverage by shifting attention away from Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait and focusing it on the plight of the estimated 12,000 Westerners detained in Iraq and Kuwait. Of particular concern is the safety of the roughly 200 U.S., British and French citizens believed to have been taken to secret locations that would be likely targets of attack.

On the 30-minute videotape, which was broadcast on Iraqi television and carried in this country by Cable News Network, Hussein appeared, not in the military uniforms in which he has previously been seen, but nattily dressed in a gray suit, his tie coordinated with his pocket square.

His appearance underscored the dishevelment of the people he called his guests, most of whom were wearing shorts and some of whom were shirtless. After posing for pictures with them, the Iraqi president made his way through the small crowd like the host at a cocktail party, stopping several times to touch a child’s cheek or ruffle his hair.

He drew one unsmiling, saucer-eyed little boy named Stuart to him, pulling the arm of the reluctant child, who appeared to be about 5 years old.

“You getting your milk, Stuart?” Hussein asked through a translator. When the boy replied that he was having it with his cornflakes, Hussein noted: “I don’t think all Iraqi kids can get cornflakes.” Hussein also asked Stuart and other children what games they like to play.

One mother noted that the academic year will begin next month and pleaded with Hussein “to at least consider sending the children back to school.”

Hussein replied that Iraq would provide tutors, and when she pressed the issue, he changed the subject. By way of reassurance, he finally said: “We do not want war to come despite the fact that we know that we can smash and crush any aggression that may be perpetrated against us.”

Neither the nationalities nor the names of the hostages shown with Hussein were announced, but several spoke with a British accent and at one point Saddam declared that although “I am sure you would prefer to be in England now” those present should think of themselves as “heroes of peace,” rather than hostages. “You are not hostages,” he said. “I am not speaking for propaganda purposes but (out of) a truly humanitarian concern that we want you to be safe.

“Stuart, I am sure, will be happy to have as part of his life or his personal history that he played a role in maintaining peace,” he said, as the child stood stiffly and kept his arms tightly crossed. “I am sure that you all have your own diaries and will write down any feelings,” Hussein added.

As he spoke to the small group, he was flanked by two uniformed soldiers, evidence of the security that surrounds him. One of the officers stooped to pat Stuart on the head.

Some of the hostages smiled as Hussein shook their hands. One man told the Iraqi leader that President Bush seemed “quite stubborn,” while saying that Iraq’s last offer--a demand that U.S. troops be withdrawn from Saudi Arabia before negotiations could begin on freeing the hostages--had been “quite reasonable, we all think.”

At the end of the odd meeting, he asked the families to gather around him as if posing for a picture at a family reunion. “Let’s have a collective photograph to remember,” he said. “You are accumulating memories of this occasion.”

The footage was a vivid demonstration of how controlling the media, particularly electronic imagery, has become “part of the battlefield” in international conflict, said Brian Jenkins, a counterterrorism authority who heads Kroll Associates, a Los Angeles consulting firm. Shown at a time when the two sides may be edging closer to war, the broadcast carried “a certain appeal--that if we don’t start anything, no one gets hurt,” Jenkins said.

But many predicted that the unusual broadcast would backfire, generating little support for Hussein outside his own country. “There aren’t going to be many people in the world who find this charade charming,” said Neil Livingstone, a private consultant who is considered a counterterrorism expert.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was reported by her office to have reacted “with repulsion,” and a spokesman for relatives of the British hostages said the footage “made all of us feel sick.”

In the United States, which has about 3,000 citizens in Iraq and occupied Kuwait, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher described the interview as “shameful theatrics.”

Hussein has made only two other appearances on television since the crisis began.

The Iraqi president insisted that his earlier statements, reported throughout the world as a vow to use hostages as “shields,” were misinterpreted, and he noted that the Arabic word for shield sounds very much like the word that means “prevent or avoid war.”

“In any case, your presence now and in this sort of atmosphere is not a source of pleasure to us,” he said. “This does not make us happy.”

He said that colonial powers had created Kuwait by severing it from Iraq, and he used the image of a mother reunited with her infant to explain his invasion of Kuwait.

The British government, which has about 4,000 of its citizens stranded in Kuwait and Iraq, quickly condemned the broadcast. “This repulsive charade takes to new extremes the hypocrisy of Saddam Hussein and his callous disregard for human rights and individual feelings,” it said in a statement issued by the Foreign Office.

A Bush Administration official said the White House initially had wanted to decline to comment on the videotape, but agreed to issue the statement describing the interview as “shameful theatrics” after the State Department insisted.

While relatives of U.S. hostages said they found some comfort in seeing videotape of any hostages alive and apparently healthy, it was little consolation.

“It seems like they’re safe, but I’d feel better if they were here at home,” Kathy Majerek of Ogden, Utah, told the Associated Press. Her brother, his British wife and their two children are unable to leave Iraq.

Times staff writers David Lauter and Douglas Jehl contributed to this story.