U.S. won't strike at Iraq, at least not before 'stage 2'

09/25/2001

By TOD ROBBERSON
The Dallas Morning News

AMMAN, Jordan – After a week of intense diplomacy by Arab leaders, the U.S. government appears to have removed Iraq from its list of primary retaliation targets for the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told CNN on Sunday that if any attack on Iraq were being contemplated, it would not be until "stage two" of a U.S. military campaign. Other officials suggested that if any strike against Iraq occurs, it could be months away.

Arab leaders warned Washington repeatedly over the past week that their governments would consider withdrawing from a U.S. coalition to fight terrorism if Iraq is attacked. Just the talk of striking Iraq has stirred protests across the Muslim world.

"If Iraq is hit, it would really raise the street," Ali Abul Ragheb, Jordan's prime minister, warned in an interview. "If Iraq is hit for this reason, it might affect the level of cooperation of the Arab countries within the coalition."

He and other Arab leaders say no hard evidence has surfaced publicly linking the Iraqi government to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Many Arab governments have expressed nervousness about the popular reaction to any attack on Iraq, saying it would be viewed not as an attempt to halt terrorism but rather to exact revenge and settle old scores from the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

"What we want is justice, not revenge," said the Saudi Arabian foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, following a round of meetings in Washington last week.

Arab League Secretary-General Amer Musa was more blunt. "Clearly, we would never accept a strike against an Arab country, no matter what the circumstances," he told reporters. "It is not a matter of grabbing the opportunity to hit any Arab country."

Iraq has spent the past 10 years under heavy international economic sanctions, which the United Nations says will be kept in place until Baghdad cooperates with international inspectors searching for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons-making facilities.

Conservatives in Washington are pressing for some kind of action against Iraq, given Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's refusal to permit the U.N. inspections and for threats he has leveled against the United States. Iraq is one seven countries on the State Department's list of nations supporting terrorism. A CNN-Gallup poll on Sunday showed that 73 percent of respondents favor attacking Iraq.

In the Arab world, however, the years of economic sanctions are criticized as excessive, effectively punishing the Iraqi people for the perceived sins of their leader, political analysts said.

Some Arab states openly broke with the United States and resumed full trade links to Iraq. Jordan last year initiated airline flights to Baghdad, suspended since 1991, but it announced the suspension of those flights on Sunday because the insurance company of its national carrier withdrew coverage for fear of an imminent attack on Iraq.

Arab officials say the historical record suggests that outright enmity exists between the Iraqi leadership and fundamentalist Muslim militant Osama bin Laden, the exiled Saudi millionaire accused by the United States of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks.

"We know the Iraqi regime would never go along with fundamentalist Islam, ever," said one Arab official. "They have always been fighting fundamentalist Islam," especially the type represented by Mr. bin Laden's secret network of operatives, known as al-Qaeda.

"Anyone who suggests some kind of Iraqi link with al-Qaeda is totally missing the point," said Radwan Abdullah, a political scientist who specializes in terrorist movements.

"Those people [in al-Qaeda] despise Saddam Hussein and everything he stands for," Mr. Abdullah said. "He represents the exact kind of repression and corruption that al-Qaeda is fighting against. He in no way represents Islam or Islamic values."

Analysts acknowledge, however, that Iraq and al-Qaeda could have formed an alliance of convenience, given that they share a mutual enemy in the United States. A similar alliance existed between the CIA and the Afghan mujahedeen guerrillas who opposed Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989.

But the only hint of evidence to surface publicly since the Sept. 11 attacks were media reports, citing U.S. officials, that a photograph had been found showing an Iraqi intelligence agent meeting in Europe with an al-Qaeda member. U.S. officials cautioned that such photographic evidence does not constitute proof of Iraqi support for al-Qaeda or any link to the attacks on New York and Washington.