An Iraqi minister threatened Israel with attack if it participated in any US-led military action against the regime of President Saddam Hussein, in comments published in an Emirati daily on Friday.
”Iraq will deliver a deep blow to Israel that it will not forget if it interferes in the war,” Trade Minister Mohammed Mahdi Saleh told the Al-Khaleej newspaper.
Israeli government representative Avi Pazner insisted on Friday that the Jewish state ”is not involved in the US efforts.”
But he added his government was taking all precautions to deal with any repetition of Iraq’s Scud missile attacks during the 1991 Gulf war.
The Iraqi trade minister warned US President George Bush against pressing ahead with his threat to the UN General Assembly on Thursday to strike Iraq if it does not disarm.
Washington should ”study well the history of Iraq before launching a strike on Baghdad,” Saleh said.
”Iraq will not capitulate and the Iraqi people are ready to die and sacrifice themselves to defend their nation.
”If the United States launches an aggression against Iraq, all Arab peoples will be shaken from the (Atlantic) Ocean to the Gulf,” he added, saying solidarity between Arab countries would be strengthened.
Saleh blasted the United States for seeking ”to impose their hegemony … to steal the wealth of Iraq and change its rebellious regime.”
He said Washington was ”supporting terrorism and training terrorist elements on the ground to overthrow the regime in Baghdad.”
Meanwhile, Iraq has increased its payments to Palestinians and is supporting their uprising against Israeli occupation in other ways, a Palestinian activist said on Friday, hinting that Iraq is supplying arms.
Iraq has been giving money to the relatives of Palestinian suicide bombers and others killed in the two-year conflict with Israel, but now it is increasing the payments, said Ibrahim Zannen, a representative for the pro-Iraq Arab Liberation Army in Gaza.
Asked about Iraqi weapons shipments to the Palestinians, Zannen said, ”Iraq is supporting the Palestinian uprising by all means.”
The Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Friday that the military has spotted new signs of attempts to smuggle Iraqi weapons into the West Bank and Gaza across the Jordanian border.
The paper, quoting unnamed Israeli defense sources, said Iraq is trying to promote Palestinian terror attacks against Israel to shift the world’s focus away from the US-Iraq confrontation, and to open a second front in case of an American attack.
Zannen said Iraq has increased its payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers from $10 000 to $25 000. He said Saddam feels a suicide bomber reaches ”the top level of martyrdom.”
More than 250 Israelis have been killed in more than 70 suicide bomb attacks during nearly two years of fighting.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his Fatah movement have spoken out against suicide bomb attacks against Israeli civilians, saying they harm the Palestinian cause. Israel charges that Arafat is encouraging attacks, and that militias linked to Fatah are behind many of them.
Zannen said Iraq gave $5 000 each to families whose homes were destroyed in Rafah, a Gaza town on the Egyptian border, and $25 000 for each house destroyed in Jenin, scene of the fiercest battle during an Israeli incursion into the West Bank in April.
Zannen told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that Iraq has contributed between $30 and 35-million to the Palestinians since the beginning of the conflict. He said Iraq wanted to send about $1-billion of its income from controlled oil sales, but the United States vetoed the idea.
Since the end of the Gulf War, Iraq has been allowed to sell a limited amount of its oil to finance purchases of vital goods like food and medicine.
On Tuesday, about 2 000 Palestinians marched in Gaza in support Hussein, and Arab Liberation Army officials passed out checks for $10 000 to families of Palestinians killed in the conflict.
Palestinians refer to them as ”martyrs.” Making a rare public appearance at the rally, the spiritual leader of the violent Islamic Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, said, ”We, the Palestinian people, are standing with Iraq and its people in front of the American offensive. We are one body.” – Sapa-AFP