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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Augustus Gloop who wrote (14782)	3/2/2003 5:06:05 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25898

That guy must be killed before he gets the chance to unleash or sell his weapons. He is a major threat A threat to whom? His people, the Americans troops poised for war are more of a threat to him. The Arab emirates are saying Hussein should leave. Arabs break ranks on Hussein He should relinquish power and leave, United Arab Emirates tells summit Steven Lee Myers, New York Times Sunday, March 2, 2003 ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle \| Feedback URL: sfgate.com Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt -- The United Arab Emirates became the first Arab country to call for President Saddam Hussein of Iraq to step down, presenting the idea on Saturday to a summit meeting of Arab leaders as the only way to avoid an American-led war and the devastation it could cause the Iraqi people. "The Iraqi leadership should decide to give up power in Iraq and to leave Iraq," the emirates' president, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, declared in a statement. He said he wanted to propose "a way out of this complicated and dangerous crisis." The sheikh's proposal -- which would offer Hussein and his senior lieutenants immunity from prosecution in exchange for stepping aside within two weeks -- jolted a special meeting of the Arab League here on the Red Sea, where leaders of the league's 22 countries have gathered to debate how best to forge a unified response to the Iraq crisis. Far from showcasing Arab unity, though, the gathering exposed the profound divisions over Iraq. The league ended its meeting Saturday night without formally considering the emirates' proposal, prompting an unusually sharp rebuke from the president's son, Abdullah bin Zayed. "War is imminent," he told reporters after the meeting. "And there is no way we can push the Americans and the British away from it. Unfortunately, the Arabs did not have the courage of talking about it." The United Arab Emirates has become a close ally of the United States, providing access to its airfields and buying advanced American fighter jets. Although it is among the smaller Arab states, Sheikh Zayed has considerable influence, especially among the Arab nations along the Persian Gulf. Hussein has insisted that he will never step down. Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri ridiculed the resignation proposals as "dirty ideas" sponsored by the Bush administration. In a speech to the league late Saturday afternoon, the vice chairman of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, did not address the proposal, but he vowed that Iraq would defend itself against what he called an American campaign to dominate Iraq and destabilize the entire Arab world. "Damn this policy of aggression!" he told the delegates. "Damn this policy of occupation!" Yet even talking about resignation underscored Hussein's weakened position within the Arab world. Leader after leader warned the United States not to launch an attack on Iraq, saying the consequences for the region would be grave. "We are still discussing it," Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said at a news conference moments after Zayed's proposal circulated inside the conference hall. "I call it an idea. It is not an initiative." The league ended its meeting with a declaration strongly opposing an American-led attack on Iraq, calling for a peaceful solution and saying that "the neighbor countries will not participate in any military operation" against Iraq. The latter was itself a delicately worded compromise, because several Arab states already have allowed the United States and Britain to mass troops and weaponry within striking distance of Iraq. Those countries, including Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar, strongly opposed language proposed by Syria that would have explicitly forbidden such assistance. Zayed, who is ailing, did not attend Saturday's meeting, but he submitted his proposal in a written statement. Zayed said that once Hussein stepped down, the Arab League and the United Nations would govern Iraq for a "transitional period" until a new government was formed "according to the will of the brotherly Iraqi people." "We believe these ideas would contribute to the thing we all wish," he said, "the thing we are all keen on, which is protecting Iraq, guaranteeing its future, national integrity, independence and sovereignty, and to avert the regional consequences of what we are now seeing for the preparation of war." In a sign of the sensitivity to creating a precedent for calling for the removal of any Arab leader, the league's secretary-general, Amr Moussa, refused to discuss the proposal during a news conference on Saturday night. "We are not concerned with the change of regimes," he said, testily. "That is not our job. That's it." ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle \| Feedback