Kuwaitis Urge U.N. to Force Out Iraqis

Kuwaitis assembled from all over the world called Monday for the United Nations to authorize “every possible means” to force Iraqi troops to withdraw from their country and declared a holy war against Iraq’s “treachery and aggression.”

“There is no place for you in Kuwait. You will be forced out, whether by means of peace or by means of war,” Sheik Saad al Abdullah al Sabah, the crown prince, asserted. “The signs of victory are already on the horizon. The return to our homeland is imminent, and we shall, by the grace of Allah, rebuild our beloved Kuwait, an independent Kuwait, in full sovereignty.”

The conference of more than 1,000 Kuwaiti intellectuals, political leaders, students and businessmen called on international relief organizations to help halt Iraqi violence against Kuwaitis and urged the U.N. Security Council to adopt a new resolution to “ensure the withdrawal” of Iraqi forces, but it stopped short of a direct appeal for a military strike against Iraq.

“We didn’t want to give any impression, being an invaded country, having put our faith, fate and future in the U.N., to let the world think we’re saying, ‘Go clobber him on the head, hit him.’ It’s the sort of attitude we find way beneath what this cause is all about,” said Salman Abdul-Razek Mutawa, minister of planning.

But Kuwaitis gathered here were clearly losing patience waiting for a peaceful resolution to the crisis, amid reports that an average of six Kuwaitis a day are being killed by Iraqi troops and that the tiny, oil-rich emirate is being slowly dismantled.

In an emotional finale to the deliberations, a young Kuwaiti girl stood in front of the delegation and read “a message from the children of Kuwait to the children of the world.”

“The thieves have come in the dark, stolen our land, and we are now without a sun,” she said. “When they stole our pens and pencils and crayons, they thought that they had stolen the love of Kuwait. But they did not know . . . it was instilled deep in our hearts, where the thieves cannot reach.”

In their final communique, conference delegates resolved to liberate Kuwait, whatever the costs. “We make a covenant with God and ourselves . . . that we shall consider liberation as our goal, repatriation as our objective, the emir as our leader, jihad as our path, national unity as our weapon and death in the path of Allah as the sweetest of our wishes until victory is achieved.”

The three-day conference was marked by hours of closed-door sessions in which the ruling Sabah family was forced to make significant concessions for democratic reforms in a future liberated Kuwait and also to relinquish some controls over Kuwait’s estimated $100 billion in assets abroad.

Opposition leaders in the weeks since the invasion have expressed increasing concern that Kuwait’s huge holdings of stocks and monetary deposits be maintained in the name of the government treasury, not that of the ruling family.

There have been reports in recent weeks that the authority to sign checks and authorize disbursements from various Kuwaiti government assets has been restricted to members of the Sabah family, and concern among opposition leaders grew when a controversial figure dismissed in an earlier financial scandal was rehired by the Kuwaiti Investment Office in London.

Opposition leaders, who had originally pushed for appointing a parliament-in-exile or official advisory council to oversee the actions of the Kuwaiti government operating in Taif, Saudi Arabia, instead agreed on the appointment of a series of oversight committees, including a committee that would oversee international investments, according to several conference sources.

“People are worried about the money. They want some guarantees,” one delegate said.

A member of the ruling Sabah family said it is important not to go “too far” in embracing democratic reforms at a time when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is attempting to portray the invasion as a move to free Kuwait from a band of wealthy oil sheiks.

“We didn’t want Saddam Hussein to be able to use it as a weapon, to say, ‘See? I brought back democracy in Kuwait,’ ” he said. “I hope there will be a broadening of control, but we have a saying in Arabic: ‘Too many cooks burn the food.’ ”