Iraq Calls Bush’s Pullout Ultimatum ‘Shameful’ : Reaction: But Baghdad does not say whether it will comply. It denies setting Kuwaiti oil facilities afire.

Iraq condemned President Bush’s ultimatum as “shameful” in a vitriolic response Friday that gave no indication that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein intends to comply. The Iraqis also stressed that Iraq “is not afraid of his (Bush’s) brutal force.”

In a statement broadcast on Baghdad Radio, Hussein’s ruling Revolutionary Command Council flatly denied Bush’s charge that its occupation troops were setting ablaze all oil facilities in Kuwait in a deliberate “scorched earth” policy and condemned the U.S. President as an “enemy of God” for his pronouncements.

The council accused Bush of causing destruction and called upon the U.N. Security Council to form a neutral committee to inspect civil and economic damage in Kuwait and Iraq and see what was related to military requirements. It named China and the Soviet Union as its nominees for the committee.

And while Bush appeared to write off the Soviet peace initiative, the Iraqi council tried to keep alive the diplomatic flurry of the past week in what it called a continuing effort to find a political settlement.

“We confirm that Iraq wants peace and is working seriously to support the Soviet initiative and facilitate its success, but not out of fear of Bush’s threats,” declared a spokesman for the council.

The statement read by the spokesman, Faris Qasira, apparently a low-level Iraqi official, was the only Iraqi response to Bush’s ultimatum; it was unclear whether the council or Hussein himself planned to answer Washington’s demands on a higher level.

The spokesman denounced as “shameful” Bush’s demand for stiffer terms for Iraq’s withdrawal than those under discussion in Moscow. There, the spokesman said, Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz was authorized to reply to the Soviet initiative on behalf of the ruling council.

But there was no mention of the ultimatum on Baghdad Radio’s main 8 p.m. news broadcast, which escalated Iraq’s war rhetoric in apparent preparation for a coming ground war, saying: “The sons of Iraq have prepared for them (the allies) what they deserve--God’s burning fire, which will devour the evil and the despicable traitors who have sold themselves cheaply to the foreigner. They wanted a ground war. The soldiers of Iraq, the soldiers of the leader, Saddam Hussein, supported by God and the people, welcome it with hearts full of faith. . . .”

The broadcast then repeated an earlier communique, aired five hours before Bush issued his ultimatum, in which Baghdad Radio informed Iraq’s front-line commanders that the ground war had already begun.

“Our heroic Iraqi forces: There is no doubt that the ground war has started!” the Iraqi military communique said.

That was swiftly, categorically denied by allied military officials.

The tone of Iraq’s communiques Friday indicated clearly that, even before the ultimatum from Washington, Hussein’s regime was fully prepared not only for the failure of all recent initiatives for peace but also for a ground war.

And despite the view of some analysts that Iraq’s premature announcement of the ground war’s opening salvo was disinformation by state-run Baghdad Radio, most veteran observers of the regime said, instead, that the Iraqi leadership genuinely believed that the land war had begun.

The rest of the day’s communiques--besides the one directed at Bush’s ultimatum--took pains to blame the ground war on America and its allies. The broadcasts also sought to bolster military morale.

Hussein’s regime, clearly caught off balance by the intensity of Friday’s ground action, labeled the attacks “a grave development, which will frustrate all opportunities for peace which Iraq has accepted.” Later, in the communique, Iraq--apparently convinced there would be an allied rejection of the Moscow negotiations--adopted a similar tone of resignation, with Baghdad preemptively seeking to affix blame for the failure of the peace process on the United States.

“We declare to the world public opinion that the United States of America and its alliance are the only people who are responsible for what is going on. . . . We have prepared for it very well.”

But if Hussein and his commanders were convinced the ground assault had begun, his sympathetic neighbors were equally optimistic Friday that the war Hussein calls “the mother of all battles” had been all but averted.

In Jordan, which is officially neutral but is overwhelmingly pro-Iraqi at the grass-roots level, King Hussein spoke at a press conference after bidding farewell to the visiting prime minister of Sudan, another Iraqi friend in the war.

“I am full of optimism and hope at developments at hand,” the king told reporters before Bush announced his ultimatum. King Hussein thanked the Soviets, the Iraqis and the Iranians for their weeklong peace attempts, proclaiming them those “who have seen an end to darkness and the breaking of a new dawn. I hope that this is the end and believe it should be.”

Asked about the Soviet plan’s failure to address the issue of the stateless Palestinians, of whom hundreds of thousands live in Jordanian refugee camps, the king said: “I believe that the Palestinian problem is a problem that should be addressed on its own merits. I believe there is a feeling in the world that this should be the case.”

Most analysts saw his comments as an acceptance of the fact that, despite President Hussein’s many attempts to link the Palestinian issue with Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait, this would not be a part of the negotiation process.

Meanwhile, in Iran, there had been considerable optimism about the prospects for peace before Bush announced the allied deadline. But unlike King Hussein, the Iranians made clear that they might be sorely tempted to abandon their neutrality if the allies reject the Moscow initiative that Iran helped launch more than a week ago.

The Ayatollah Mohammed Emami Kashani, a senior Iranian cleric, called on the allies to stop the war immediately. “Now that Iraq has accepted the peace plan, they (the allies) should not continue their crimes,” Kashani was quoted as saying on state-run Tehran Radio.