Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 5, 1991 TAG: 9102050524
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: From Cox News Service and The Associated Press
DATELINE: RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA LENGTH: Medium
President Bush said he would send Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin Powell to the Persian Gulf this week for "a firsthand status report" on a conflict he said is "going very well indeed."
He told reporters that any leader but Saddam Hussein would surrender rather than submit Iraq to the continued pounding it is taking from the air.
Bush laid out tough conditions for a cease-fire, saying Iraq must begin a "credible, visible, totally convincing withdrawal" from Kuwait, and immediately restore the government of Kuwait.
"He's got to say, I'm going to get out of Kuwait, now, fast."
The Cheney-Powell trip will be the first high-level mission to the gulf since the war began with bombing of Iraq on Jan. 17, and comes as the president is weighing a timetable for commencing ground battle action.
Bush reiterated that there would be no allied concessions to prompt such a withdrawal. He declined to say when the war would end, but said it would "not be long and drawn out."
In Iraq, Baghdad Radio relayed a message from "Maymoon" to "strugglers in all revolutionary cells," and told four people identified by code names: "Do not spare any interest of any of the countries taking part in the aggression against your brethren in Iraq, against an Arab and Islamic nation."
The allied bombings, at a pace of 30 combat flights an hour, seemed to be having an effect. Iraq, which has strictly limited the sale of gasoline for two weeks, today banned the sale of fuel supplies to civilians "until further notice" at the height of winter, Baghdad radio said in another broadcast. Iraqi oil refineries and storage depots have been bombed frequently by the allies in the first 20 days of the war.
In the Persian Gulf, the battleship Missouri fired six more rounds from its mammoth 16-inch guns, silencing an Iraqi artillery battery that had been shelling positions in Saudi Arabia.
In what were either coded instructions or a step-up in psychological warfare, an Iraqi woman on Baghdad radio followed up Iraq's customary calls for Islamic attacks against westerners with instructions from "Maymoon" to specific agents. "Mudar" was told not to "hesitate to do anything" while "Kutayba" was ordered to "implement what's on the table, and what's outside it."
In Riyadh, the Saudi capital, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, the theater commander, said pilots were under strict orders to avoid civilian casualities whenever possible.
Schwarzkopf, in an interview Monday, accused Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of moving his command and control units into schools and other civilian sites.
by CNB