[this is in the month when US oil imports from Iraq of massively
recommenced. The US now imports 70% of its petroleum energy. Mark]
Guardian: Brian Whitaker and John Aglionby in Jakarta
Monday August 14, 2000
American and British aircraft renewed their bombing of Iraq at the weekend
after a six-week lull - killing two people and hitting a railway station and
food distribution centre, according to Baghdad.
The strikes came amid verbal attacks by Iraq on what it called "the hireling
rulers in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait".
They also followed a double public relations coup in which Saddam Hussein
last week welcomed the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez - the first
democratically elected head of state to visit Baghdad since the 1991 war -
and the president of Indonesia announced that he will shortly travel to
Iraq.
The first allied raid, on Friday night, struck Samawa, 170 miles south of
Baghdad. Iraq said a warehouse containing food and other material imported
under the UN's oil-for-food programme was hit. Two people died, 19 were
injured and six houses badly damaged, it said.
A second raid on Saturday night hit the railway station in Samawa, causing
some injuries, the official Iraqi news agency said.
But the US insisted that allied aircraft had targeted Iraqi command posts
and surface-to-air missile sites after Iraq opened fire on planes patrolling
the southern no-fly zone.
The Pentagon spokesman Rick Thomas said: "We seek to avoid injuries to
civilians and damage to civilian facilities."
Allied planes have frequently bombed targets in the no-fly zones since
Baghdad stepped up its defiance of the western-imposed restrictions in
December 1998. Iraq says around 300 civilians have been killed and 900
wounded in these attacks.
America disputes these figures and accuses President Saddam of deliberately
placing military sites close to civilian areas.
In London, a Foreign Office spokesman said yesterday that strikes on Iraq
were only carried out "in response to direct threats to our aircraft".
But the Iraqi news agency described the strikes as a response to a speech
last week in which President Saddam said his Gulf neighbours had "sold their
souls" to the US and Israel.
In a protest letter to the UN, the foreign minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf
accused the Saudi and Kuwaiti governments of "providing logistical support
for the American and British forces, making them contributing partners in
the aggression".
Baghdad turned up the rhetoric against its Gulf neighbours after the 10th
anniversary of the invasion of Kuwait on August 2. Kuwait responded by
putting its armed forces on alert.
Meanwhile, President Abdurrahman Wahid of Indonesia said at the weekend that
he would meet President Saddam in the coming weeks. The US secretary of
state, Madeleine Albright, condemned the decision. But Mr Wahid said: "We
are not a lackey of the US. We are free to go anywhere."
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