Hussein Exhorts Troops, Calls Victory ‘Certain’

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, making no reference to a political settlement, exhorted his army Sunday to prepare for a long conflict in defense of occupied Kuwait.

Dressed in military fatigues and a beret, Hussein told a nationwide radio and television Army Day audience: “Victory in this battle is certain, God willing.

” . . . The Iraqi armed forces have unshakable faith in their mission, in their struggle, which will not stop regardless of the sacrifices.”

Army Day, a national holiday in Iraq’s martial society, fell three days before scheduled talks in Geneva between Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz and Secretary of State James A. Baker III, but the Iraqi leader spoke only of war.

“The results of this battle will be great, and all the world and future generations will talk about . . . its positive results,” Hussein proclaimed.

“It is the role of the faithful to fight against tyranny, against injustice, against corruption and against the foolish and tyrannical U.S. Administration and its puppet, the Zionist entity, and against those bad people who have formed with them an alliance of tyranny and injustice.

“For these reasons,” said the leader of the 17 million Iraqis and their million-man army, “the battle in which you are locked today is the mother of all battles.”

It is, he added, “not expected to be a short one . . . and will entail great sacrifices,” a military euphemism for casualties.

Elsewhere, a Cypriot freighter and a Saudi oil rig were reported to have been damaged by mines, but it was not clear whether newly laid mines were involved in either incident. Mines left from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War are still occasionally sighted in the region.

The freighter, struck in the Gulf of Oman, was reported sinking, but its crew was rescued.

In Iraq, high-blown martial rhetoric is traditional on Army Day even in years of peace--although there have been few under Hussein’s rule--and so is a military parade of Iraqi troops, armor and rockets. Sunday, however, the parade in downtown Baghdad was canceled without explanation.

Hussein’s demand for sacrifice and appeals to pan-Arab sentiment--”It’s a battle for the liberation of Palestine,” he said--gave no hint that his embattled regime intends to comply with the Jan. 15 United Nations’ deadline for withdrawal from Kuwait.

On Saturday, the president’s information minister, Latif Jasim, told reporters in Baghdad: “Dates set by (President) Bush only exist in his mind and imagination, and we don’t recognize them.”

In the mine incidents, the report on the damaged freighter came from the Greek Merchant Marine Ministry in Athens. A spokesman told Reuters news agency that the 6,514-ton Demetra Beauty hit a mine in the Gulf of Oman, south of the Strait of Hormuz.

“The ship was hit in its engine room and is slowly sinking,” he said. “The crew is safe and was picked up by the Omani coast guard.” The Cypriot-flagged ship was carrying a cargo of tar from Germany to Iran.

Meanwhile, Lloyd’s Shipping Intelligence reported it had unconfirmed information from Saudi Arabia that an unmanned offshore oil rig just south of Kuwaiti waters was damaged by a mine two days ago. The Iraqis are believed to have mined the waters off Kuwait.

The Bahrain-based Middle East Navigation Aid Service, the gulf’s primary safety agency, said, however, that it issued no warnings to ships about the mine reports, saying it was waiting for conclusive evidence.

A U.S. Navy spokesman in Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital, said six mines had been destroyed in the Persian Gulf from mid-August to Dec. 31. It has not been determined whether they were newly laid or old.

In other gulf crisis developments on Sunday:

* Forty-two German, Belgian and Italian air force jets flew to Turkey to help defend its frontier with Iraq if war breaks out. They make up a NATO air team requested by Turkey.

* Iran and the European Community made new efforts to try to avert a gulf war. Iran called for an emergency summit of the 46-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference to consider a peace initiative. And the EC repeated an invitation to Aziz to meet for talks. Aziz rejected the original European offer on Saturday.

* A Saudi newspaper said without mentioning sources that Iraqi authorities executed a military officer for divulging what it said was an escape plan for Hussein if the war goes against him. The Saudi report said the Iraqi leader would attempt to flee to Yemen or Libya.