IRAN - Saddam's View of US Plans.

In a letter reportedly written by Saddam Hussein and posted on the Internet, Iraq's former Ba'thist dictator urged Arab rulers to back Iraqi insurgents, warning that an "American-Israeli conspiracy" aimed to split Iraq into pieces. The message warned Arab rulers meeting in Khartoum on March 28 that their countries could be next in what he called a grand US scheme to divide the Arab world and control the Middle East's oil wealth. (The authenticity of the letter, which did not bear a signature, could not be verified. It was posted on a website which backs Saddam's former Ba'th Party and has previously carried messages in his name. A former member of Saddam's defence team Ziad Khasawneh said the item was written in the deposed leader's style, adding: "The tone of the letter, the language used, and the substance...all point to the letter being Saddam's". Saddam has spoken out in support of the insurgency during court appearances at his six-month-old trial for the killings of 148 Iraqi Shi'ites in the 1980s. In a March 15 appearance, Saddam urged Iraqis to unite to fight US troops and praised the "resistance").

The Internet letter advises Arab rulers to support the insurgency, calling it "the bulwark to stave off waves of US, Zionist, and Iranian conspiracies". It said the insurgency had "impeded the establishment of a global dictatorship led by the US". The letter did not refer to al-Qaeda in Iraq, behind some of the worst terrorist bombings in the country. Most insurgents are believed to be native Iraqis - whether Saddam loyalists, Neo-Salafi militants or other Sunni Arab nationalists.

The letter said: "The historic solution to save the Arab nation is to support the armed Iraqi resistance materially and politically". It said Arab states did not need to make public their support for the insurgency but can back it secretly, given that several of the Arab League's 22 members are close allies of the US.

The letter said the turmoil in Iraq "is not an accident or the result of mistakes made by the US administration... These are interconnected steps whose final goal is to split Iraq into three states", for Shi'ites, Sunnis, and Kurds. It said that, after dividing Iraq, the US will carve up Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Sudan, then establish a Palestinian homeland in Jordan and western Iraq. That would let the US control oil in the Arab world and let Israel take over the West Bank, emptied of Palestinians, it said.

Arab rulers on March 28 insisted they be directly involved in helping shape Iraq's future. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa called on Arabs "to enter into the nuclear club and make use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes". The summit of the Arab League, held in Khartoum on March 28-29, was contending with complex issues involving Iraq's future, Iran's nuclear dispute with the West and how to deal with a Hamas-led government in the Palestinian territories now that Israel wants to set its West Bank borders unilaterally. Ten of the Arab rulers did not attend the summit.

President Jalal Talabani, in his speech before the final session of the summit which was read by Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari, said Arab governments were allowing terrorists to infiltrate Iraq's borders in "a plot aimed to weaken us in order to destroy us". He added: "The biggest support to the terrorists and the former regime loyalists get is from media outlets in some Arab states and their decision-making circles".

This is the strongest ever statement by an Iraqi official accusing Arab states of supporting the ongoing violence in Iraq. He asked Arab states to provide "all possible help in eradicating terrorism and drying up the sources of its activities". Terrorism, Talabani said, was "a common enemy, which threatens all Arab states". He complained of the reluctance of Arab states to send their ambassadors to Baghdad. He asked the summit to abolish debts, due on Iraq to Arab states, worth dozens of billions of dollars, "which represent a heavy burden on our people".

Talabani did not take part in the Khartoum summit, citing the current political impasse over the formation of the new government as a reason for not being able to leave Iraq. The summit ended with a call on Iraqis to stop the violence and speed up the setting up of a national unity government. But the Iraqi delegation, led by Zebari, failed to win an Arab pledge to send ambassadors. (Arab states cite lack of security as a reason for not re-opening their diplomatic missions in Baghdad}.

The summit welcomed Jordan's effort to host a meeting of Iraqi religious leaders, aimed to reduce sectarian tension in their country. It said the Jordanian initiative was "a step in the right direction". The proposed conference will held in co-ordination with the Iraqi government and the Arab League. Another meeting, the Iraq National Reconciliation Conference, is scheduled to be held in Baghdad in June.

Moussa was particularly emphatic about Iraq in his address, saying: "Any solution for the Iraqi problem cannot be reached without Arabs, and Arab participation". But the Daily Star of Beirut on March 29 said: "Arab leaders have conspicuously failed to resolve any significant regional issue in the last half-century or so, while allowing their countries to degenerate into increasingly inequitable and abusive systems of exploitation and corruption, often enforced by militia power".

The paper added: "Many of those who did attend [the summit], like the Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian presidents, are under immense domestic and global pressure to resign, or to radically change their policies. The defining collective characteristic of Arab heads of state is an embarrassing combination of irrelevance, their overseeing police-state autocracies, and their razor-thin legitimacy... Not surprisingly, most young people in the Arab countries these days respond to the dilemma of living in such a world with a range of startling options: a majority of youths wants to emigrate to foreign countries, finds refuge in religion rather than more fully engaged citizenship, adheres to extremist political groups or terrorist cells, goes along with institutionalized corruption and nepotism, experiments with drugs and diversionary alien lifestyles, or joins a militia".