Iraqi President Mr Saddam Hussein has said the United States "reaped the thorns planted by its rulers" when New York and Washington came under terrorist attack.
"Irrespective of the conflicting human feelings about what happened in America yesterday, America is reaping the thorns planted by its rulers in the world," the official INA news agency quoted.
"There is hardly a place that does not have a memorial symbolizing the criminal actions committed by America against its natives," INA quoted the Iraqi president as telling the military industrialization minister, Abdul Thawwab alMalahwish, and other military officials.
Japan was the first to suffer from the "nuclear destruction capabilities which America boasts about," Saddam said.
He went on to cite America's record in Vietnam and Iraq, "what it did to the Russian nuclear submarine, and the criminal actions it is engaged in now through its support for the criminal, racist Zionism against our heroic Palestinian people."
"Who does not want to reap evil must not sow it, and who considers the lives of his people precious must remember that the lives of the people in the world are precious also," he said.
"The American peoples should remember that no one ever crossed the Atlantic carrying weapons to be used against them. They are the ones who crossed the Atlantic carrying death, destruction and ugly exploitation to the whole world," he said.
If the American people "remember all this, they will (protect) their and the world's security from their rulers. But if what happened to America was an internal matter, the (American) people might be in a better position to diagnose the ailment," he added.
AFP