President Saddam Hussein warned Wednesday that Iraq would hit back in retaliation for US and British attacks, and called for Washington and London to pull their forces out of the Gulf, reported AFP.
"The people of Iraq and their command will not stand idle" in the face of the most recent attack by US and British warplanes, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein vowed in a speech to mark the 13th anniversary of the end of the Iran-Iraq war.
"If you want to save your pilots and planes from the fire of the courageous combatants of Iraq, you must leave and take your planes and warships with you, and stop attacking Iraq," he said, addressing Washington and London.
The president’s remarks came after US planes on Tuesday bombed an Iraqi multiple rocket launcher in northern Iraq in what Pentagon officials said was an immediate response to a provocation.
Pentagon sources told CNN that the Iraqi rocket launcher fired three surface-to-air missiles at US planes patrolling the northern no-fly zone imposed by the Western coalition, and a US Air Force F-16 dropped two laser-guided bombs on the launcher in response.
The bomb damage has not been completely assessed, but a Pentagon official told the news service that it was believed the bombs hit the target, north of the Iraqi town of Mosul.
There was no immediate response from Baghdad.
The Pentagon said it was the first strike against Iraqi air defenses since July 17, when US planes bombed an air defense site in the southern no-fly zone.
The last time US planes bombed in the northern no-fly zone was June 14.
Pentagon sources told CNN that the United States has "put on hold" plans for large-scale "retaliatory" air strikes because of concern that the negative reaction from US allies in the region was not worth the limited effect the bombing would have on Iraqi air defenses.
Sources said the United States was back to its usual policy of striking smaller targets that threatened coalition planes on an "as needed" basis, adding that Tuesday's strike was an example of the policy, according to CNN.
US President George W. Bush, vacationing at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, denied the United States was ratcheting up military pressure in the region, but he used the occasion to denounce Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as "a menace."
"The missions that took place were fully in accordance with established allied war plans, and as I said Saddam Hussein is a menace, he's still a menace, and we need to keep him in check and will," Bush told reporters.
"He's been a menace forever and he needs to open his country up for inspections, so we can see whether or not he is developing weapons of mass destruction," said Bush, cited by AFP.
US forces had held their fire since July 17 despite a series of Iraqi efforts to target US reconnaissance aircraft and an admission by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that Iraq has "quantitatively and qualitatively" improved its air defenses since a major strike February 16.
The "no-fly" zones are not authorized by the UN.
The zones are ostensibly in place to protect Kurdish and Shiite Muslim minorities in Iraq. However, during the period in which US and British planes have been flying missions from Turkish airbases, Turkish forces have launched their own massive assaults on the Kurds – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
