Saddam to Israel: Quit Arab Lands : Gulf crisis: The Iraqi leader reacts to the slaying of 19 Palestinians in Jerusalem. He also reveals a new missile threat.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein told Israelis today that they have no choice but to leave Arab lands, and he said Baghdad possesses a new long-range missile capable of reaching targets hundreds of miles away.

In a message read over Baghdad Radio responding to Monday’s killing in East Jerusalem of at least 19 Palestinians by Israeli security forces, Hussein said Iraq’s new missile would strike “when the time of reckoning comes.”

“You have no choice but to leave the lands of Palestine and Muslim shrines,” he said.

President Bush said today Israeli security forces should have acted “with more restraint.” But he declared that Hussein should not use “this unfortunate incident” to try to link his occupation of Kuwait with the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

Asked at a White House news conference if the flare-up would endanger the Arab coalition confronting Iraq, Bush said, “I don’t think it could do that.”

Hussein gave no details about the new Iraqi missile, which he said was invented by Iraqis “with God’s help.”

Israeli police shot the Palestinians in East Jerusalem after clashes at shrines sacred to Jews and Muslims on the Temple Mount. Referring to the rocks hurled by Arab youths against their Israeli opponents, Hussein said Iraq’s rockets were like those stones and would be “able from somewhere in Iraq to reach the targets of evil.”

Arab diplomats called Hussein’s statement an attempt to refocus world opinion from his two-month-old occupation of Kuwait to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

“Hussein is in trouble over Kuwait . . . so he is trying to exploit the Israeli massacre of Palestinians in Jerusalem to shift world attention away from his occupation of Kuwait and onto the Arab-Israeli conflict,” an envoy in Cairo said.

“Hussein knows he is isolated, so his threats are an attempt to win more support among Arabs and Muslims,” the diplomat said.

Iraq announced in 1988 that it had developed a cluster missile with a longer range than any other weapon of its type.

Western sources also said Iraq has modified Soviet-made SCUD missiles to increase their range. They are also capable of carrying chemical weapons in Iraq’s arsenal.

Hussein also said that like the Israelis who must leave occupied Palestine, “the armies of America and its allies have no choice but to leave the holy sites of Arabs and Muslims” in Saudi Arabia.

The State Department issued new warnings to American travelers in the Middle East today. The government advised “all U.S. citizens to avoid travel to the West Bank, Gaza (Strip) and East Jerusalem until further notice.”