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Politics : Dutch Central Bank Sale Announcement Imminent? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jamey who wrote (19771)	12/14/2003 6:48:10 AM
From: mcg404	Respond to of 81120

James, <Ambassador who advised Saddam that the U.S. would not intervene if he crossed into Kuwait. It was a brief headline...> Actually, this story has been widely discussed and disputed. Only weeks before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990, the US ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, told the Iraqis: “We don’t have an opinion on inter-Arab disputes such as your border dispute with Kuwait, and we have directed our official spokesman to reiterate this stand,’” and “I have a directive from the President, persoanlly, that I should work to expand and deepen relations with Iraq.” No wonder that Saddam Hussein was under the impression that the US would not intervene! Glaspie, in congressional testimony on 20 March 1991, said that her strongest statements had been deleted from the Iraqi-released transcript of her meeting with Saddam. The Government has refused to release its transcript of the meeting. After her testimony, some commentators suggested that Glaspie had not been as forceful with Saddam Hussein as she subsequently claimed, whilst others thought she was a scapegoat for diplomatic infighting. “The new official line is a transparent lie,” commentator William Safire wrote. Glaspie gave a candid postwar interview to the New York Times in which she said, 'We never expected they would take all of Kuwait' — suggesting that the Americans were indeed expecting some military action by Iraq. [Penny Johnston, 'The case of April Glaspie', Pegasus Mideast.Forum, 19 April 1991] vicpeace.org John