Iraqi Calls for Ouster of Hussein : Mideast: President’s son-in-law emerges from hiding, vows to overthrow regime. General who built war machine says he fled because he couldn’t reverse nation’s decline. Baghdad media denounce ‘traitor.’

The architect of Iraq’s war machine, who defected to Jordan last Tuesday, emerged from his hiding place Saturday to call for the overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, his father-in-law.

“We will work seriously to change the regime in Iraq . . . through political and military means,” Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel Majid told a press conference at King Hussein’s heavily guarded palace in Amman, the Jordanian capital.

“We are calling on the officers of the Iraqi army, the officers of the Republican Guard, the officers of the special guards, the civil servants of the Iraqi state and all the Iraqi society to be ready for this important change,” he said through an interpreter.

“I know all the officers of the army and the Republican Guard know what this call means.. . . We will establish new and developed relations with the world and get rid of what is shameful and what caused the backwardness of the society,” said the general, who wore a dark business suit and looked relaxed as he spoke.

Majid denied diplomatic reports that he already has been contacted by U.S. military and intelligence officers eager to hear what he has to say about Iraq’s non-conventional weapons programs. He said that contacts with foreign governments will come later.

In Washington, the Clinton Administration said the general’s remarks “tend to confirm our view that his defection is a potentially significant development.”

An Administration official said the comments “underscore the extent of Saddam’s isolation in Iraq” and reinforce the U.S. view that the Iraqi dictator is responsible for the suffering of the Iraqi public.

The general said that he drove with his brother, Saddam Kamel Majid, another son-in-law of Saddam Hussein who was head of Hussein’s presidential guards, their wives and an entourage of aides and officers from Baghdad to the Jordanian border without being stopped or questioned.

He said that he had decided to defect after failing to reverse Iraq’s decline from within the regime’s inner circle. At the time of his defection, Hussein Majid was minister of industry and military industrialization. A distant cousin of Saddam Hussein, he is credited by Western diplomats with building the Iraqi war machine in the 1980s that invaded Kuwait in 1990. After Iraq’s crushing defeat at the hands of a U.S.-led international coalition in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Hussein Majid was put in charge of rebuilding the nation’s shattered infrastructure.

He also had been in charge of Iraq’s difficult negotiations with the special U.N. commission charged with clearing Iraq of weapons of mass destruction under the terms of the Gulf War cease-fire. Iraq had been hoping that the commission would certify next month that all its non-conventional weapons programs are now dismantled, a move that must come before the Security Council will lift its embargo on Iraq and allow the nation to export oil.

In excerpts of the news conference shown on state-run Jordan Television, Hussein Majid said that units of the elite Republican Guard now are deployed throughout Baghdad. He said he believed that members of his Majid clan will be arrested “at random” and that some will certainly be executed as a result of his defection. The clan, which has for years held key positions in the Iraqi government, has been thought to be locked in a power struggle for months with Saddam Hussein’s sons and half brothers.

Jordanian television reported that King Hussein met Saturday with Gen. J. H. Binford Peay, commander of the U.S. Central Command, to discuss the Iraqi developments.

Last week, President Clinton said the United States would protect Jordan against any Iraqi retaliation for the king’s having granted asylum to the Iraqi defectors. U.S. Marines are to conduct previously scheduled military exercises with Jordanian forces later this month.

In Baghdad, state-run television aired interviews with Iraqis who called for Hussein Majid to be put to death for betraying Iraq. State-controlled newspapers ran banner headlines on their front pages, denouncing the general. Television and radio carried an address to the nation by President Hussein denying Western speculation that Majid’s defection might mark the start of the fall of the Iraqi regime.

Saddam Hussein accused Majid of seeking to prolong the crippling U.N. sanctions on Iraq and predicted that “once [the enemies] get everything out of him, he will be thrown on the open road . . . together with those who preceded him to treason and disgrace.”

One newspaper referred to Hussein Majid as a “traitor dwarf.” The daily newspaper Al Iraq asserted that “the garbage heap of history is the appropriate place for anyone who betrayed the covenant, stabbed the nation and nationalism, and extended his hands humiliatingly to shake hands with those who want evil for Iraq.”

The harsh response inside Iraq underscored the importance the regime attaches to Hussein Majid’s defection. But it is not clear whether Saddam Hussein is lashing out because he fears that Majid will provide enough information to the United Nations or the United States to ensure that sanctions remain in place, or because he fears that Majid may somehow be able to instigate rebellion in the army from abroad.

Hussein Majid declined to tell reporters what role he intends to play in seeking to overthrow Saddam Hussein. But he said that change must come from within Iraq, not from outside. There are many Iraqi opposition groups, in the Middle East, Europe and the United States, but they have no grass-roots support in Iraq and have always been divided among themselves.

Majid said that he is in touch with opposition groups.

Maj. Gen. Wafiq Samarrai, former head of Iraqi intelligence who defected to Syria in December, told the Associated Press in Damascus that he welcomes Majid’s defection.

But other opposition members have expressed reservations about cooperating with Majid, noting that he was a pillar of what they view as a repressive and violent regime for years before deciding to flee.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.