US/IRAQ: President Saddam Hussein insisted yesterday he was co-operating with UN weapons inspections to save Iraq from disaster, but a key aide, Mr Tareq Aziz, warned it would be a miracle if there were no war.
"The important thing is to work to keep our people out of harm's way," President Saddam told top officials at a meeting marking the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr. Despite his apparent hope of avoiding US military strikes, his Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Aziz, predicted war was all but unavoidable. "If the war does not occur, it will be a miracle," Mr Aziz told the US ABC television network in an interview taped on Wednesday.
Meanwhile President Saddam once more championed the Palestinian cause yesterday by drawing a parallel between Iraqis and Palestinians, who he said stood on the front line against a "US-Zionist alliance". "Iraq and Palestine bring to the surface two images of mankind, that of a people that relies on God and that of a criminal and base despotism embodied by the US-Zionist alliance," he said in his first public comments in a fortnight.