Hussein, PLO Radical Warn Israel to Retreat

President Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Palestinian guerrilla chieftain Abul Abbas warned Israel on Tuesday that failure to withdraw from the occupied territories will invite eventual retaliation.

In separate remarks on the killing Monday of 19 Palestinians in the Old City of Jerusalem, the two Arabs demanded international condemnation of the bloody incident.

Hussein, in a statement read by a studio announcer on Baghdad Radio, told the Israelis: “You have no choice but to leave the land of Palestine and Muslim shrines.” He said Iraq has developed a long-range missile that would “serve like the stones of Palestinian youths.”

Several times in the last 10 months, Iraq has threatened to use missiles against Israel but only in response to an Israeli attack on Iraq with “weapons of mass destruction.” In Tuesday’s remarks he mentioned no such condition.

“O Zionists,” Hussein’s statement said, “the heavier your weapons, the more arrogant you are and the more sins you commit.”

Later in the day, demonstrations protesting the killings were held at several sites around Baghdad.

Abbas, the guerrilla leader, spoke out at a news conference, saying he holds the United States and Israel equally responsible for what he termed a “vicious massacre.”

He called on Washington to refrain from using its Security Council veto to block any U.N. condemnation of the incident. If the world body fails to take action, he said, “our reaction will be very severe . . . against Israel in a direct way.”

The Security Council should require the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank and Gaza Strip and their replacement by an international peace force, Abbas said. This proposal has been put forth before by Palestinian leaders.

Abbas, head of the maverick Palestine Liberation Front and a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s ruling council, talked with reporters at PLF headquarters in Baghdad.

Compared to past statements, his performance was relatively tempered and appeared to be aimed at creating divisions between European countries and the United States. He singled out France for praise of its Middle East policies.

He linked the violence in Jerusalem to the Persian Gulf crisis and asserted that it was the first step in an Israeli plot to invade and occupy Jordan, where popular sentiment is strongly pro-Iraqi.

A thickset, unsmiling man, Abbas was behind the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, in which an elderly American, Leon Klinghoffer, was shot and pushed overboard. Last May, Abbas’ forces mounted an abortive raid on Israeli beaches. Washington and Jerusalem have branded him a terrorist.

“Will the international community expect us to keep silent in the face of this massacre?” Abbas asked. “What will you say in the future if there is a reaction from our side? Will you say it’s a terrorist action?”

He insisted that Palestinians have a “legitimate right to armed defense.”