The Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, today made a defiant speech on Iraqi television declaring that he was ready for war.
In a pre-recorded address on Iraq’s Army Day, he accused the UN inspectors of being spies, called his enemies the ”friends and helpers of Satan” and said he was ”prepared for anything”.
His speech came as the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said a war against Iraq was not a foregone conclusion.
”There has been so much talk in the newspapers about war, suggestions that the chances of war are 100%, that it’s important to try and correct that impression,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
”It is [Saddam’s] decision which will ultimately affect whether military action is necessary or not.”
The UN inspectors will report to the security council on January 27 and report on their progress. Any failure on Iraq’s part to cooperate with the UN teams could trigger war.
Saddam did not say if his suspicions about the inspectors would lead Iraq to stop working with them but asserted that they were spies.
”They went to collect names of Iraqi scientists and ask irrelevant questions and search military camps and other things and all or most of it is purely intelligence work.”
He accused Washington of trying to push the inspectors to go beyond their duties outlined even in ”the bad resolutions of the security council” but said that the US and its allies would face defeat in they attacked.
”We are in our country and the one who is in his country is right and its enemy is wrong. When the enemy comes as an aggressor, the victory will go to the people of right when they are inside their homeland,” he said.
”The enemy will be defeated disgracefully. It has misjudged and misbehaved after abandoning any means of honesty on which good people meet and cooperate.”
He said he knew his military would stand by its oath to protect the nation — perhaps an answer to some analysts who believe the Iraqi army could collapse if attacked by a far stronger US force.
”We are confident, depending on the Almighty, that you will be, with the beginning of every new day, better until you reach the best situation, in defiance of the disappointed enemy, the friends and helpers of Satan, night and darkness,” he said.
”Their arrows will go aimlessly while your arrows will hit them,” he said.
Saddam also sought to appeal to other Arabs by raising the Palestinian question, saying the US was trying to divert attention from ”the crimes committed by the Zionist entity against our people in Palestine”, and accused Washington of talking up a war to mask its own problems.
”The enemy wants cover for the fragility of its [security] apparatus regarding the events of September 11, the weak, or even the semi-collapsed, American economy, and the failing US policy in Afghanistan,” he said. – Guardian Unlimited Â