Arabs ask Hussein to go quietly

Qatar last month called for an emergency Arab summit to discuss the crisis with Iraq, raising speculation that the tiny Gulf state's hopes to win backing for Hussein's peaceful departure. The 22-member Arab League has yet to set a date for an emergency session, although a regular meeting is scheduled for March in Bahrain.

Proposed havens for Hussein include Syria, Libya, Egypt, Iran, Russia, and Belarus. Last week, the Iranian newspaper Entekhab reported that German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer had told his Iranian counterpart, Kamal Kharrazi, that the US intended to overthrow Hussein without a "war, bloodshed, and heavy military expenditure," and that Iran and Russia were possible choices of exile for Hussein.

Mr. Kharrazi dismissed the media speculation as "groundless rumors."

It is not only Arab leaders that are pushing for Hussein's peaceful ouster. A group of Arab intellectuals have compiled a petition calling on Hussein to step down to avoid a "catastrophe" in the Middle East.

"The immediate resignation of Saddam Hussein, whose rule for over three decades has been a nightmare for Iraq and the Arab world, is the only way to avoid more violence," reads the petition, which is due to be made public this week.

It also calls for the deployment of human-rights monitors from the United Nations and the Arab League to oversee a peaceful transition of power in Iraq.

"There has been a tragic silence on the fate of the Arab world by the Arab world," says Chibli Mallat, a Lebanese professor of international law and one of the signatories. "Our lives are at stake with all these chemical weapons - so we had this sort of reaction that we should do something."

Yet many Arab and Western diplomats and analysts believe that Hussein will not leave Iraq voluntarily.

"They are dreaming if they think this man will leave," says Abdullah Bishara, head of the Diplomatic Center for Strategic Studies in Kuwait. "He will bring down the walls like Samson."

Joe Wilson, a former diplomat in Baghdad and the last American official to meet Hussein, said that the Iraqi leader was the "epitome of 'L'état c'est moi.' "

"In his own mind he is Iraq. He would not easily give that up, if at all," Mr Wilson says. He adds that Hussein would fear being extradited from his country of exile to face charges of war crimes, like former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

"Far more likely is that he will try to manage the crisis to survive and if that is not possible, to go down as a martyr in the Arab struggle against Israel and the recurrent humiliations inflicted by the West," Wilson says.

• Staff writer Howard LaFranchi contributed to this report from Washington.

Page: 1 | 2