Kuwait fears allies are warming to Iraq

By Diana Elias

KUWAIT (AP): Five Kuwaiti lawmakers on a swing through the region found out exactly what other Arabs think of the emirate a decade after many rallied to its aid against Iraq. They didn't like what they heard.

Earlier this year, Iraq had alarmed Kuwait by stepping up its threatening talk, with Odai Hussein, the son of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, saying Kuwait should be included in a new map of Iraq.

Yet what the lawmakers got from political and labor union leaders in Jordan, Syria and Tunisia was complaints that Kuwait's response to the Iraqi threats was "exaggerated," and that it was "starving the Iraqi people" by supporting sanctions, said Mohammed al-Saqer, Parliament's foreign affairs committee chief.

Kuwait has planned lavish celebrations of the Feb. 26 anniversary of its liberation from the seven-month Iraqi occupation 10 years ago. The guest of honor will be U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, the former Gulf War general.

But just as it gets ready to party, Kuwait is seeing its ties with Arab Gulf War allies tested by the lure of Iraqi oil wealth, the popularity of Saddam's anti-Israeli rhetoric, and public anguish at the effect of sanctions on ordinary Iraqis.

Egypt and Syria, both of which committed troops to the U.S.- led international coalition when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, last month signed free-trade agreements with Baghdad and played host to top-ranking Iraqi officials.

Iraq has allocated half of its UN-supervised oil-for-food contracts to Arab producers. Egypt expects to export US$1 billion worth of goods to Iraq this year, and Syria is reportedly planning to reopen a pipeline carrying Iraqi oil to its Mediterranean port of Baniyas.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said after a visit here that he "sensed in Kuwait a worry that the trade agreement we signed with Iraq represents a change in Egypt's position." He said he renewed Cairo's commitment to Kuwait's security and sovereignty.

Bashar Assad, his Syrian counterpart, did the same in an interview with Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassah. Neither Syria nor Egypt has restored full diplomatic relations with Iraq.

Like many ordinary Kuwaitis, Sawsan al-Sarhan sympathizes with the Iraqi people's suffering under sanctions and says she hopes the Egyptian and Syrian trade deals will bring them relief. "However, there have to be limits," the homemaker said. "Saddam should not feel that Arab countries are supporting him and they don't care about Kuwait."

Wafic al-Samaraai, a member of the Iraqi opposition, said on Kuwait TV that Saddam's overtures to Egypt and Syria were meant to break the international embargo imposed on Iraq and "isolate" Kuwait and its ally Saudi Arabia, which still refuse to have ties with the Iraqi leadership.

Kuwaiti officials say they are satisfied with Syrian and Egyptian promises to confine their dealings with Baghdad to trade. But Khaled al-Jarallah, an undersecretary in the foreign ministry, told The Associated Press: "Our only concern is that Iraq misunderstands the message as an encouragement to back away from its international commitments."

Iraq has shut UN weapons inspectors out for two years, and U.S. analysts fear it has used that time to rebuild some of its UN-banned chemical or biological weapons programs.

Kuwait political analyst Faisal al-Kenai said Arab nations shouldn't imagine Iraq has changed.

"A thrust toward Saddam Hussein could lead to a worse situation than we found ourselves in 1990," he said.

But Saddam is a hero to many ordinary Arabs for his threats against Israel, and some Arab leaders try to walk a fine line placating both sides.

Shortly after Lebanon's prime minister, Rafik Hariri, left Kuwait with promises of new aid, Emil Lahoud Jr., a Lebanese lawmaker and the president's son, flew to Iraq with a trade delegation.

Kuwait has spent billions of dollars on development projects in Arab nations since the 1960s. So Kuwaitis were shocked that countries such as Jordan, Sudan and Yemen sided with Iraq during the crisis, and it took years to mend the rift.

"The effect of the development projects we finance are long- range, and unfortunately people on the street don't feel them right away," Kuwaiti political scientist Shamlan al-Issa said. "Saddam gives cash to writers, journalists and artists" who flock to Baghdad thinking they are helping the Iraqi people.

Many Arabs focus on the sanctions, which ban most trade with Iraq and subject its oil industry to UN oversight.

Kuwait's official stance is that Baghdad must implement UN Security Council resolutions requiring that it be certified free of weapons of mass destruction before sanctions can be lifted.

But a recent editorial in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai Al-Amm suggested recalibrating the sanctions so that they spare the innocent and punish the Iraqi leadership.

"The regime will not fall unless it is directly targeted. Don't give it an excuse to use Iraqis as human shields ... while the head of the regime spends hundreds of millions on his palaces and birthday celebrations," it said.

Lawmaker al-Saqer said Saddam's power over his people is only increased when they are in desperate straits, and that lifting sanctions will help the Iraqi people to topple him.

"It's the Iraqi regime that doesn't want to help its people," he said. "Saddam rules Iraqis by the power of food ration card."