Rumsfeld: Saddam's Foreign Exile Could Help Avoid War

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, September 19, 2002

Rumsfeld: Saddam's Foreign Exile Could Help Avoid War

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US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggested late Wednesday that a decision by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to leave the country and go into exile would help avoid US military action against Iraq.

"Now, if Saddam Hussein and his family decided that the game was up and we'll go live in some foreign country like other leaders have done," Rumsfeld said in an interview with PBS's "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" program when asked what, if anything, could satisfy the administration of President George W. Bush short of military action against Baghdad.

He did not finish the sentence.

"There have been any number of leaders who have departed recognizing that the game was up, that it was over, that they had run their term. So that could happen," said the defense secretary citing the examples of former shah of Iran Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Ugandan president Idi Amin and Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier.

The Bush administration has declared regime change in Baghdad the key goal of his Iraq policy.

Rumsfeld said that, in his view, it was entirely possible that the people of Iraq could decide that Saddam Hussein's time was up and change the regime from inside.

But he acknowledged that "it would be a very difficult thing to do."

"But clearly the overwhelming majority of the people even the army don't want Saddam Hussein there," Rumsfeld said.

The defense secretary dismissed Iraq's agreement to allow UN weapons inspectors to resume their work in the country, saying "it looks a lot like earlier ploys and plays and moves that Iraq has taken."

Iraq signaled its readiness to readmit the inspectors after a four-year hiatus in a letter delivered to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Monday.

But Rumsfeld said that since the unveiling of the letter, Iraqi anti-aircraft batteries had fired at US and British planes patrolling no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq six times.

"If that isn't a signal as to what they have in mind, I don't know what it is," the defense secretary said.

Source: Agencies

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