News Digest Edited by Jennifer O'Cilka
World watches, waits for peace in gulf
DHAHRAN. Saudi Arabia - A waiting world
watched Baghdad and the bleak Arabian desert
Wednesday—Baghdad for word on peace, the
desert for news of all-out
war.
American helicopters
carted off hundreds of Iraqi
prisoners after one action
and Iraqi gunners zeroed
in on a U.S. unit in an
other, killing one Ameri
can and wounding seven.
A key French lawmaker said the Desert
Storm allies would give Iraq until late Thurs
day to respond to a Soviet peace proposal or
face a final offensive to drive iis forces from
Kuwait.
“Now, more than ever,” said French For
eign Minister Roland Dumas, “the ultimate
decision rests with Saddam Hussein."
Late Wednesday, Baghdad radio said For
eign Minister Tariq Aziz would travel to Moscow
“soon” with the reply of President Saddam and
the rest of the Iraqi leadership to the Soviet
plan, believed to call for an unconditional Iraqi
withdrawal from Kuwait, coupled with vague
assurances that Saddam could stay in power
and the Palestinian question would eventually
be addressed.
The U.N. secretary general, Javier Perez de
Cuellar, described the initiative as a “historic
opportunity,” and U.S. ally Italy also endorsed
it House Speaker Thomas Foley said that if the
withdrawal is unconditional, “I don’t know
how (President Bush) could fail to accept it.”
Bush kept a public silence on the issue
Wednesday, a day after describing the plan as
“well short” of U.S. requirements. Although
Bush did not elaborate on his objections, Re
publican House leader Robert Michel said,
“We want to see conditions change.”
Dismissing the alliance’s strategy for an
assault on Kuwait, Baghdad radio declared:
“Their paper plans will be nothing when the
ground battle starts.”
Desert Storm commander Gen. Norman
Schwarzkopf said the Iraqi army, under aerial
bombardment for a month, was “on the verge
of collapse.” Other senior U.S. officers added
that they still expected a bloody fight.
“There’s still a formidable force out there,”
one said.
British military sources said Iraqi troops
were dispersing multi-rocket launchers and
other artillery at the front in apparent readiness
to take on the allies with chemical weapons.
Early Wednesday afternoon, a U.S. task
force clashed with Iraqi forces south of the
Saudi border, and the Iraqis called in artillery
fire that killed one American and wounded
seven others, the U.S. command reported. It
said the Iraqi fire hit an American anti-aircraft
gun and two Bradley personnel carriers. U.S.
forces destroyed five Iraqi tanks, 20 artillery
pieces, and captured seven prisoners.
A short time later, the command said, U.S.
Army strike helicopters attacked a complex of
Iraqi desert fortifications just north of the bor
der, destroying 15 to 30 bunkers and leading
400 to 500 stunned Iraqi infantrymen to surren
der.
As darkness fell, Army Ch-47 Chinook
helicopters were completing the task of ferry
ing the prisoners to a holding camp in northern
Saudi Arabia, said command spokesman Brig.
Gen. Richard Neal.
It was the largest roundup of prisoners yet
by U.S. forces. The command did not specify
locations or identify the U.S. units involved in
the two actions.
The command also reported U.S. aircraft
pounded an Iraqi armor concentration 60 miles
north of the border and destroyed 28 tanks. B
52 bombers blew up an Iraqi Scud missile
launch site.
The Desert Storm air fleet mounted 2,900
sorties against targets in Kuwait and southern
Iraq on Wednesday, for a total of more than
86,000 in the 35-day-old war. British officers
reported that a smoky haze over Kuwait, pre
sumably from oil fires, obscured some targets.
More than four hours of bombing rocked
Baghdad overnight, and the Iranian news agency
said panicked residents “rushed to the streets to
escape to the nearby villages.”
Pilots say Kuwait on fire;
Iraqi tanks still formidable
Editors Note: The following dis
patch was subject to U.S. mili
tary censorship.
AT AN AIRBASE IN SOUTH
WESTERN SAUDI ARABIA - U.S.
combat pilots said Wednesday that
Kuwait is already a burning, cratered
battlefield, but that allied forces
still face a formidable, dug-in Iraqi
Iarmy with plenty of tanks.
F-l 11 pilots have been flying
round-the-clock bombing missions
to prepare the battlefield in Iraq
and Kuwait for a ground offensive,
and report that the allies have de
stroyed a significant part of the
Iraqi war machine.
“The whole military establish
ment is burning,” said Capt. Bra
dley Seipel, 34, of Virginia Beach,
Va. As a weapons system officer of
an F-l 1 IF fighter-bomber, Seipel
directed some of the bombs that
started the fires.
He and other airmen at this desert
airbase for U.S. Air Force F-l 11
strike aircraft gave a bird’s-eye
view of what the battlefield will
look like to allied troops moving
forward in a ground war.
“It is amazing flying up there.
You look at Kuwait, that whole
area, it’s just fire,” Seipel said.
“It’s like constant explosions,
constant fires,” said Capt. Mike
Russell, 33, of Bradenton, Fla., the
pilot on Seipel’s jet. “It’s just awe
inspiring night after night how we
ripped them up.”
The airmen with the 48th Tacti
cal Fighter Wing (Provisional) have
been concentrating on tanks, artil
lery and Iraqi army reserves in
their nightly missions in Kuwait
and Iraq.
“This is a war and wc’rc beating
them bad,” Russell said.
Russel and Siepcl already have
flown 100 hours dropping prcci
sion-guided bombs.
Their targets included Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein’s sum
mer palace in his hometown of
Tikril; halting the oil flow into the
gulf from an Iraqi-sabotaged off
shore oil terminal near Kuwait City,
and two dock buildings in Kuwait
City stacked with ammunition.
“We’re one small part of the
picture and there are so many other
people . . . that are just bombing
them constantly,” said Russell.
“It seems to me it’s still a very
target-rich environment, and I don’t
think we’ve come close to exhaust
ing all the possible targets,” said
Lt. Troy Stone, 25, of Hemlock,
Mich., an F-111F weapons system
officer.
Capt. Brad Roberts, 29, of Boise,
Idaho, Stone’s pilot, said taking on
an entrenched enemy is “the worst
position you want to be in” but that
superior allied armor “is going to
help us a lot.”
Several pilots said they favored
delaying the ground war to save
American lives by taking out more
targets.
The airmen said Iraqi cities are
dark because allied bombers have
knocked out most of Iraq’s power
plants.
Unconditional withdrawal
Baker: Iraq will leave ‘soon’
WASHINGTON - Secretary of
State James Baker III declared on
Wednesday that Iraqi troops “will
leave Kuwait soon,” but he steered
clear of the question of Saddam
Hussein’s postwar future.
House Speaker Thomas Foley said
it would be "extremely difficult” for
President Bush to refuse an uncondi
tional Iraqi withdrawal.
Baker, speaking at a luncheon for
Denmark’s Queen Margrethc II, re
newed ihe U .S. demand that Iraq pull
out of Kuwait “immediately, totally
and unconditionally” and comply
fully with U.N. resolutions. “Any
thing short of that is unacceptable,”
he said.
“One way or another, the army of
occupation of Iraq will leave Kuwait
soon,” Baker predicted.
Foley, the top-ranking Democrat
in Congress, said lawmakers share
the administration’s concern about
Saddam remaining “a serious prob
lem in the gulf for years to come.”
But if Saddam agrees to an uncondi
tional withdrawal, Foley said, Bush
would have “a very difficult choice.”
“I don’t know how he could fail to
accept it.”
He said later that the question might
be academic because there has been
no indication Saddam is prepared to
withdraw unconditionally, despite
much discussion of a still-secret Soviet
proposal on the subject.
Lt. Gen. Thomas Kelly, director of
operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
noted that he and other officials had
said a day earlier a ground war would
be won “in short order.”
“I should have said ‘good order,”
he said. “I don’t think it’s going to be
any kind ot pushover. . . . It s not
going to be a snap.”
One military official, speaking on
condition of anonymity, said ‘‘We are
in the eye of Desert Storm. There is
something of a lull right at the mo
ment.” He added, “It suggests the;
machinery is in place and we are
waiting for presidential orders.”
“We want to stay on course with
our military tack,” said House minor
ity leader Robert Michel, an Illinois
Republican, “and not be delayed ’
“Even a cease-fire type of thing cer
tainly would only play into Saddam’s
hands.” .
The Iraqi president was weighing
a Soviet peace proposal, which was
still secret but which Bush had dis
missed on Tuesday as “well short of
what would be required” to end the
conflict.
Albanian president promises new government
VIENNA, Austria - The president
of Communist Albania, responding
to unprecedented protests that toppled
monuments to Stalinist founder En
ver Hoxha, said Wednesday he would
lake direct control of a new govern
ment.
“I have decided to take into my
hands the government and create a
new government and a new presiden
tial council,” President Ramiz Alia
said in an announcement broadcast
nationwide on state television.
He said the country was ‘‘at a criti
cal point,” and appealed for the coop
eration of opposition parties. ‘‘We
must all of us work to get out of this
situation,” he addetfc
The change watf ‘‘necessary for
J peace and democracy,” Alia said,
appealing to Albanians to preserve
calm.
Anti-Communist demonstrators in
two cities toppled Hoxha statues
Wednesday, unleashing decades of
pent-up wrath against the late dicta
tor.
Police, some with dogs, at first
fired in the air in an attempt to keep
thousands of people from a 30-foot
tall bronze statue that dominated
Skanderbeg Square in the center of
Albania’s capital, Tirana, state tele
vision showed.
But then the police began to em
brace people in the jubilant pro-de
mocracy protest, witnesses said.
Sources in Tirana, who asked not
to.be named, said they also had heard
the Hoxha statue in the southeastern
city of Korea came down. There was
no official confirmation.
Ignoring police warning shots over
their heads and smoke bombs thrown
around the statue’s stone pedestal,
demonstrators surrounded the Tirana
monument. Some scaled it and pulled
it over with a rope, television re
porters said.
Crowds punched the air with V
signs symbolizing democracy and
shouted opposition slogans as two
military helicopters hovered overhead,
witnesses said.
There was no immediate reaction
from Albania’s Communist govern
ment or from opposition parties first
founded in December.
Soviet parliament blasts Yeltsin
MOSCOW - The Soviet parlia
ment formally censured Russian leader
Boris Yeltsin on Wednesday for urg
ing Mikhail Gorbachev to resign, and
Gorbachev’s former foreign minister
pleaded for peace in the “war of presi
dents.”
The plea by Eduard Shevardnadze,
in his first public remarks since his
resignation as foreign minister last
December, suggested the depth of the
crisis in Soviet government. Shevard
nadze quit after warning that the na
tion was heading toward dictatorship.
In a stormy session of the Supreme
Soviet parliament, fellow lawmakers
accused Yeltsin, the president of the
Russian Federation and a frequent
Gorbachev critic, of declaring a civil
war and seeking more power for
himself.
In a resolution adopted 292-29,
with 27 abstentions, they accused
Yeltsin of defying the constitution.
The resolution said his statement
on national television Tuesday was
“aimed at replacing the lawful organs
of state power_It contradicts the
constitution and aggravates the situ
ation in the country.”
Shevardnadze, who spoke at the
opening of a non-governmental for
eign policy association he heads, told
reporters that if destabilization con
tinues, dictatorship or a civil war is
still possible.
He urged Yeltsin and Gorbachev
to meet to resolve their differences
because “this war, a war of parlia
ments, a war of laws and now a war
of presidents, must be ended.”
“Everybody must think of the
country, the people, the fate of de
mocracy in the Soviet Union and the
world,” Shevardnadze said.
In his resignation speech last
December, Shevardnadze blamed the
military and the Communist Party’s
Old Guard for Gorbachev’s shift away
from reform. He said Wednesday that
the Soviet crackdown in the Baltics,
which occurred after his resignation,
“confirmed that my fears were not
baseless.”
Yeltsin seemed to blame Gorbachev
alone for the nation’s ills.
In his televised interview, he pro
claimed that Gorbachev “has led the
country to a dictatorship, giving it a
pretty name: presidential rule.”
He went on to say: “I am in favor
of his immediate resignation, with
the power being transferred to a col
lective organ, the Federation Coun
cil.”
Nebraskan
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