Iraq is ready to fight says Hussein

Press, 17 April 1980, Page 8

Iraq is ready to fight says Hussein

NZPA-Reuter Beirut The Iraqi President (Mr Saddam Hussein) has branded Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeiny a “turbaned Shah,’’ and hinted that Iraq is prepared to use force to resolve its conflict with neighbouring Iran.

In one of his most bitter attacks on the Islamic revolutionaries running Iran, Mr Hussein told a mass rally in the northern Iraq city of Mosul yesterday that the Iranian leaders were working against the interests of their people and violated accepted principles of behaviour.

“Khomeiny is • a turbaned Shah,” the Iraqi News Agency quoted him as saying, in a reference to the distinctive headdress of the Iranian spiritual leader. Referring to the steadily worsening conflict between Iraq and Iran, both important oil producers, the President said: “It is a good thing to avoid a collision—unless a collision is a national duty.” He added “when such a collision becomes a national duty, Iraq will fight ... to defend the honour of the Arab people and the honour and dignity of Iraq.”

Mr Hussein ridiculed a recent statement by the Iranian President (Mr Abolhassan Bani-Sadr) that Iraq had sent intermediaries to Iran to try to resolve a crisis which has led to border clashes in recent weeks.

The Iraqi President reiterated Iraqi demands that relations with Iran must be revised on the * basis of three main conditions: —The withdrawal of Iranian forces from three strategic islands occupied by forces of the ousted Shah in 1971;

—The return to Iraq of sectors of Shatt Al-Arab Estuary which forms part of their southern border and were ceded to Iran under a 1975 agreement; and —The recognition that “the people of Arabistan are Arabs.” Arabistan is the Iraqi term for the Iranian oil province of Khuzestan, which has a large Arab minority and borders on Iraq. At least one person was killed and three were wounded in a clash between Shi’ite Muslims and pro-Iraqi gunmen yesterday, security sources have said in Beirut. .

The clash, in which automatic weapons were used, occurred during a strike in protest against the reported disappearance of a religious leader in Iraq. The strike was called by Shi’ite community leaders ,in Beirut, after reports that a prominent Shi’ite clergyman, Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Al-Sadr, had disappeared from his home in the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf, south of Bagdad.

Several Iranian newspapers reported that the Ayatollah had been murdered, but" informed Iranian sources in Teheran quoted Arab diplomats as saying the religious leader had been taken to Bagdad by Iraqi security forces and was alive;