- BAGHDAD, Iraq (UPI) - Iraqi
Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Sultan Hashem Ahmed said his country could destroy
Israel and that it was ready to confront any aggression against the Arabs,
the weekly Al-Zawraa newspaper said Thursday.
-
- "Iraq can destroy Israel because it possesses a
large combat experience in dealing with all possibilities," Ahmed
told the newspaper in an interview to be published next week.
-
- He said Iraq would not hesitate to send its armed forces
to defend an Arab country targeted by Israel.
-
- He said the Iraq military was prepared to deal with any
potential aggression.
-
- Ahmed also said there could be no peace in the Middle
East until Israel returned the land to the Palestinians.
-
- Ahmed said there was no military coordination between
Iraq and the other Arabs over a potential conflict with Israel, but said
that several states, including Syria, were satified with Iraq's position
on the violence in the Middle East.
-
- "The Palestinian cause will not be solved until
the Jews leave Palestine and its (Arab) people return to their homeland,"
he said.
-
- Last month, some 1.6 million Iraqis reportedly responded
to a call by President Saddam Hussein and volunteered to fight alongside
Palestinians against Israeli forces in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east
Jerusalem. Iraq also demanded that the United Nations deduct $900 million
from its oil revenues in support of the Palestinian Intifada. The United
Nations, which imposed sanctions on Iraq in 1990, allows Iraq to sell oil
in exchange for food.
-
- Ahmed also said his country was prepared for any future
escalation of violence against the United States and Britain, which patrol
the northern and souther no-fly zones over Iraq.
-
- "Maybe the technology used by the Americans in their
continued aggressions against Iraq is highly developed, but the field
combat experience that the Iraqi forces have gained allows it to confront
and even surpass the American technology in the battlefield," he said.
-
- Ahmed headed the Iraqi delegation to the 1991 talks on
the Kuwait-Iraq border that resulted in a cease-fire with the U.S.-led
allied forces after 42 days of fighting during the Gulf War.
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