Hussein Vows to Defeat U.S.
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BAGHDAD — Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said Wednesday that his people don’t want a war, but he vowed that they would defeat any U.S. military action to oust his government.
“Your brothers in Iraq wish that God would spare them evil and avoid fighting,” Hussein told a group of Arab representatives gathered in Baghdad to show their opposition to a possible U.S. military strike.
“If God chooses that we have to fight, we won’t disappoint you,” he said. “We will fight them in a way that will please you and annoy [the] enemies.”
He did not elaborate.
Hussein said earlier that Iraq wants an overall solution, based on United Nations Security Council resolutions, to its crisis with the U.S., which is centered on Baghdad’s alleged production of weapons of mass destruction.
More than 100 representatives from all Arab states except Kuwait and Saudi Arabia capped a meeting in Baghdad on Wednesday by opposing the threat of U.S. military action against Iraq and calling for the lifting of the sanctions imposed on the nation for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
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