Baghdad Scoffs at Charge It Plotted to Murder Bush

In a sardonic denial of Kuwait’s allegation that Baghdad sent agents to assassinate former President George Bush last month, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s press secretary charged Wednesday that the plot was fabricated by Washington to justify Iraq’s continued isolation.

“Why would we want to assassinate him? Bush killed himself when he got involved in leading the aggression against Iraq,” Press Secretary Abdul Jabbar Mohsen wrote in a signed editorial in the pro-government newspaper Al Iraq and released by the state-run Iraqi News Agency.

“We do not assassinate dead people,” Mohsen added, referring to Bush’s election defeat last November, which touched off celebrations in Baghdad streets by tens of thousands of Iraqis brandishing banners and slogans depicting Bush as a skeleton or a corpse. “Bush is already dead, and he does not deserve for us to waste several kilograms of explosives on him.”

But Kuwait continued to insist that the plot was real, and it vowed to begin trials soon for the 16 Iraqis, Kuwaitis and stateless Arabs apprehended by a Kuwaiti border patrol, along with hundreds of pounds of explosives, on the eve of Bush’s arrival for a three-day visit to the emirate April 14.

Brushing aside calls in the United States for the extradition of the 16, Kuwait’s Information Minister Saud al Sabah said the accused plotters will be tried in Kuwait city on charges of “terrorism, sabotage, infiltration and robbery.”

Kuwait reported the plot within days of Bush’s departure, but it initially drew little notice and no reaction from Washington.

Iraq, like the United States, initially offered no comment on the alleged plot, ignoring the first announcement from Kuwait’s rulers of the arrests by their border forces.

Since Iraq invaded and occupied the tiny oil-rich emirate for seven months in 1990 and 1991 and Bush orchestrated the massive military coalition that drove Hussein’s forces out, the Kuwaitis have been understandably prone to conspiracy theories; official reports of Iraqi plots or troop movements have not been uncommon.

It was only after strong U.S. congressional reaction this week in the wake of reports that a special team of FBI and Secret Service investigators were in Iraq--and suggestions that President Clinton should order retaliatory air strikes if the plot is linked to the Iraqi president--that Baghdad answered the charges Wednesday.