Monitor: Middle Eastern comment on the rising tensions over Iraq

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MEMBERS OF the Iraqi Parliament called for punishing neighbouring countries allowing use of their land in mounting US-British raids against Iraq. This only indicates how like the President and his regime those representatives are. Do they not all know that the country's borders on both north and south are violated? Do they not know that they cannot even threaten a fly? When will they ever learn?

Al Ahram, Egypt

THE RECENT call by the Iraqi ruler, Saddam Hussein, to the Arab peoples to rise up against their leaders was in fact intended to distract the masses in Iraq from the real problem, which is the bankruptcy of the regime. The presence of millions of Iraqis in diaspora constitutes an evidence of the repressive nature of the regime, he said. Saddam's regime has also proved that it lacks credibility with regard to the plight of more than 600 Kuwaiti nationals who have been in Iraqi prison since 1990.

Al-Ayyar, Kuwait

AS VOICES rise in Iraq rejecting all Security Council resolutions, the Arab nation has nothing but sympathy for the Iraqi people. Saddam Hussein still does not hesitate to adopt impetuous decisions, and to venture into bloody escapades in which the country's resources are wasted, and in which the country's very safety is endangered. There remains, however, a clear fact that as much as it needs a new leadership, Iraq needs also a new policy.

Al Gomhoureya, Egypt

DICTATORSHIPS WILL always create their own wars, wars that so preoccupy the people that they may allow their rulers to go unpunished, for no voice rises higher than the sound of explosions in a war. The Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and his clique thus create the circumstances to justify an attack against the Iraqi people. What they seek is more popularity, even by engaging the country into an unwarranted fight. Accordingly, the Americans, the British and the Saddam Hussein regime seem to have conspired against Iraq and the Iraqis!

Al Akhbar, Egypt