Iraqi President Saddam

LONDON -- British Defense Secretary Tom King warned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein yesterday that "no amount of threats or bluff" would prevail in the Persian Gulf crisis."

The World Israel agreed to release 300 or more Palestinian prisoners, a fraction of the 6,000 being held, but regarded as positive in attempts to revive the peace process. After a major uproar between Washington and Ankara, settled with the intervention of Vice President Dick Cheney, the U.S. military in Iraq released 11 Turkish soldiers who had been nabbed in northern Iraq and accused of plotting to kill an American-backed Kurdish Iraqi official. Beijing's boss in Hong Kong, Tung Chee-hwa, agreed to delay the implementation of a tough internal security bill after huge street protests led by pro-democracy activists.

WASHINGTON -- Representative Helen Delich Bentley, R-Md.-2nd, has come up with the most expedient way for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to surrender power: assassination."

WASHINGTON - U.S. special forces entered Syria in pursuit of a convoy believed to be carrying former Iraqi regime leaders last week and wounded three Syrian border guards in a firefight, senior defense officials said yesterday. The clash with the Syrians occurred as U.S. aircraft or commandos on the ground crossed the frontier as they closed in on the convoy. The incursion into Syrian territory underscored the risks the administration is willing to take in its stepped-up hunt for ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his sons, whom defense officials described as potential targets of the action.

Three weeks into the war with Iraq, the Maryland-based USNS Comfort is still treating more Iraqis than U.S. and British soldiers, and most of its coalition patients are in for routine injuries and sickness that occurred away from the battlefield. Of the 120 coalition fighters brought on board the hospital ship, only 35 or so had been hurt in combat, Capt. Charles Blankenship, commanding officer of the Comfort's medical facility, said at a press briefing yesterday. More than half the 300 patients admitted in the Arabian Gulf have been Iraqis - all but 30 of them prisoners of war. Activity on the 1,000-bed converted supertanker - which was designed to stabilize injured coalition fighters for transport to hospitals in Europe and the United States - has been relatively slow.

TEL AVIV, Israel -- Another missile attack from Iraq last night seemed dramatically timed to underscore Israel's fears of a Moscow peace plan that would leave Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in power.Officials here seized the opportunity to renew their warnings that Iraq's dictator must not survive this war in office."Anybody who had any thought that Saddam Hussein wants peace got his answer tonight," Avi Pazner, a spokesman for the prime minister, said shortly after the single Iraqi missile fell in pieces to the ground near Tel Aviv at 8 p.m.The Iraqi rocket appeared to have been intercepted by one of two Patriot defensive missiles that raced toward it. There were no casualties.

President Bush: "I'm president until the 20th and I will run the foreign policy and make these kind of decisions as long as I'm president. The coalition did the right thing. . . . And I've said before that we are determined that Saddam Hussein will abide by the United Nations resolutions. And we're very serious about that.President-elect Bill Clinton: "I always tell everybody I am a Baptist. I believe in death-bed conversions. If he wants a different relationship with the United States and the United Nations, all he has to do is change his behavior.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush expressed "deep and growing concern" yesterday about Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's support for terrorist groups, warning that "Iraqi support for terrorism would indeed have serious consequences."But Mr. Bush, who also voiced alarm over the "systematic dismantling" of Kuwait and mistreatment of Kuwaiti citizens and foreigners by Iraq's occupying forces, stressed that he did not believe Washington and Baghdad were moving closer to war."I want to see a peaceful resolution," he told reporters before flying to Camp David for the weekend.

SILOPI, Turkey -- As a way was sought yesterday to get armed Iraqi police out of Zakho, Kurdish refugees jammed into camps here said they would need more than the temporary disappearance of government forces to draw them home.They would need long-term guarantees of their security, they said.Leaders of the largest Kurdish clan here said they would return to northern Iraq if the Iraqi police left and security were assured by foreign protective forces."As long as Iraqi soldiers or police remained in Zakho, it is not possible, but when they are replaced by American or coalition forces, then it would be OK" to return home, said Rashid Bashir Sindi, whose father's clan is estimated to number 50,000 among the refugees here and at the Isikveren camp, high on the Turkish mountain border with Iraq.

WASHINGTON -- The United States stands a much better chance of getting Iraqi troops out of Kuwait by going to war than by giving economic sanctions a year or more to work, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said yesterday.Mr. Cheney told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is not likely to bow to long-term economic pressure, so "it is essential that we present him with the prospect of a serious Iraqi defeat.""There is no indication that Saddam Hussein is open to a peaceful resolution of the problem he has created," he said.

Three weeks into the war with Iraq, the Maryland-based USNS Comfort is still treating more Iraqis than U.S. and British soldiers, and most of its coalition patients are in for routine injuries and sickness that occurred away from the battlefield. Of the 120 coalition fighters brought on board the hospital ship, only 35 or so had been hurt in combat, Capt. Charles Blankenship, commanding officer of the Comfort's medical facility, said at a press briefing yesterday. More than half the 300 patients admitted in the Arabian Gulf have been Iraqis - all but 30 of them prisoners of war. Activity on the 1,000-bed converted supertanker - which was designed to stabilize injured coalition fighters for transport to hospitals in Europe and the United States - has been relatively slow.

For the millions of ordinary Iraqis following the war by radio, figuring out what's really happening must be confoundingly difficult. Official Iraqi radio and TV broadcasts have aired fevered calls for jihad, holy war, to drive out U.S. and British forces, along with accounts of imaginary Iraqi military victories. But competing with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime are a host of opposition broadcasters, most of them organized or financed by the CIA and U.S. military. They, too, have broadcast disinformation, including premature reports of Hussein's death.

The timing, says the film's distributor, is just a coincidence. But this week, as the war in Iraq likely rages on, Xenon Pictures will release on DVD Uncle Saddam, a satirical documentary that portrays Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as a personal hygiene fanatic who likes to fish with grenades. Uncle Saddam, made by French freelance journalist Joel Soler in 2000 and broadcast on Cinemax last November, is due in stores Wednesday. The DVD package includes a "100 percent anti-Saddam" sticker and "dictators of the world" trading cards.

TIKRIT, Iraq - Mohammed Khalid has to shout to make himself heard above the chanting voters as he describes this city, the hometown of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "It is a very quiet city. Quiet, serious, kind," says Khalid, a high school English teacher, as men and women chant, and chant, preparing to cast their ballots in the country's presidential referendum yesterday. "Our people love each other. They help each other." Tikrit, according to residents' descriptions on the day when citizens were asked to vote "yes" or "no" to Hussein's staying in office another seven years, is akin to paradise.

QORNA, Iraq -- Iraqi President Saddam Hussein claimed victory yesterday in his war with the United States, and so did Moueid Salah, standing outside his bombed-out home in southern Iraq.Hussein, in a taped public address to the nation, attributed the victory to the resolve of the Iraqi people."You were up to the level that your leadership and your brother and comrade Saddam Hussein had hoped you would be at so God rewarded you and delighted your hearts with the crown of victory," the president said yesterday in a statement broadcast by Qatari television Al-Jezira.

WASHINGTON -- For Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the United States, the latest confrontation appears to be one both sides wanted. And after six months of tension, it was virtually unavoidable.As Mr. Saddam begins a third bitter winter of economic sanctions and political isolation, he hopes to bolster his standing at home with a foreign crisis that would divert attention from the hardships of rationed food and fuel.The Iraqi leader apparently is calculating that an allied air strike is a tolerable price to pay to show that he can still defy the West and stay in power.

The news came about 7 a.m. today, as Daniel Williams made his first attempt to rise from bed: Iraq supposedly had agreed to withdraw from Kuwait -- with conditions."

WASHINGTON -- A Kurdish rebel leader announced in Baghdad yesterday that Kurds and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had reached agreement in principle on greater autonomy for their region, offering the hope that some 2 million refugees might eventually be able to return to their homes in safety.The announcement was greeted cautiously by the Bush administration, which was grappling with what President Bush called the "serious problem" of how to get Iraqi forces away from campsites in northern Iraq that are intended to lure hundreds of thousands of Kurds down from their mountain sanctuaries.

President Bush: "I'm president until the 20th and I will run the foreign policy and make these kind of decisions as long as I'm president. The coalition did the right thing. . . . And I've said before that we are determined that Saddam Hussein will abide by the United Nations resolutions. And we're very serious about that.President-elect Bill Clinton: "I always tell everybody I am a Baptist. I believe in death-bed conversions. If he wants a different relationship with the United States and the United Nations, all he has to do is change his behavior.

WASHINGTON -- It looks like there will soon be a Democratic presidential race after all.While one leading presidential possibility removed himself from the 1992 picture yesterday, two others -- Tennessee Sen. Al Gore Jr. and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton -- are sending fresh signs that they'll be in.House Democratic Leader Richard A. Gephardt, the early presidential choice of many of his congressional colleagues, confirmed that he has closed the door on...