Saddam Sends Apology to Kuwait for Invasion

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, December 09, 2002

Saddam Sends Apology to Kuwait for Invasion

The Iraqi information minister read apology by President Saddam Hussein to the Kuwaiti people Saturday night for Iraq's 1990 invasion into the southeast neighbor.

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The Iraqi information minister read apology by President Saddam Hussein to the Kuwaiti people Saturday night for Iraq's 1990 invasion into the southeast neighbor.

This was Saddam's first official regret at the invasion since the US-led forces evicted Iraqi troops from the Oil-rich emirate inthe 1991 Gulf War.

"We apologize" for what "happened to you" in the past, Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf read the message on his behalf to the Kuwait people.

He also praised the recent anti-American incidents in Kuwait, proposing "the devoted and the holy warriors in Kuwait meet with Iraqi counterparts" under their common creator against the "infidelarmies" of "London, Washington and the Zionist entity."

Saddam made a second speech in a week apparently in a tone to defuse any war-induced tension.

On Thursday, Saddam pledged to give UN weapons inspections a chance to disprove US allegation that his country still holds weapons of mass destruction.

He said he wants to spare his people of "harm way" in which "some might say we didn't give them a proper chance to disprove withsolid evidence the American charge."

Iraq is bracing for its war-or-peace verdict by UN experts, who will make the crucial decision on the basis of their extensive inspections and Iraq's declaration of weapons programs.

Iraq ensured Kuwait in March at the Arab summit meeting in Beirut, Lebanon, that it wound never repeat the 1990 invasion.

Baghdad has also returned to Kuwait the archive dossiers it captured during the invasion in another overture for reconciliation.

The key issue blocking bilateral ties remain to be the 600 or soprisons of war or missing personnel Kuwait claims to be still withheld in Iraq.

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