Kuwaiti Emir Meets PowellKuwaiti Emir Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah met with visiting US Secretary of State Colin Powell at his residence on Monday.Kuwait News Agency said that Powell congratulated Sheikh Jaber on the occasion of Kuwait's 40th National Day and 10th Liberation Day. But it did not reveal the details of the meeting. Powell arrived here Sunday evening for a two-day visit to Kuwait as part of his seven-stop Middle East tour, which has already taken him to Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian self-rule areas and Jordan. He will also visit Syria and Saudi Arabia. Earlier reports available here said that the US secretary of state was expected to discuss the plans by the new US administration of President George W. Bush to increase pressure on Iraq and patch up the shattered US alliance against Baghdad. Some 4,500 US troops and their weapons are still stationed in bases in Kuwait. US and British warplanes patrolling the so-called no-fly zone in south Iraq are also taking off from bases inside Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, although Kuwait stated that it did not interfere in internal affairs of other countries. Powell's visit to Kuwait coincides with the 10th anniversary of the US-led 1991 Gulf War that ousted Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. Powell served as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff then under the administration of former US President George Bush. Bush and a number of other former world leaders including Britain's former prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major are also here to attend the two-day celebrations which started on Sunday. As part of the festivities, US and Kuwaiti forces conducted a live-fire exercise in the desert in north Kuwait, some 50 kilometers to Iraq. The war games, which were believed to act as a deterrence to a still defiant Iraq, involved F-18 fighters, A10 thunderbolts, helicopters, tanks, artillery, mortars and ground troops. |
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