Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 5, 1991 TAG: 9103050425
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From The Baltimore Sun, The Associated Press and The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
Iraq's U.N. ambassador said all remaining allied prisoners could be freed as soon as today.
Six of the 10 former prisoners are Americans, including Army Spec. Melissa Rathbun-Nealy, of Grand Rapids, Mich., the only female soldier reported missing in the conflict. All six were reported to be in good health and reached Bahrain late Monday on their way home.
The remaining prisoners included in this first symbolic release by the Iraqis were three Britons and one Italian. They had lunches of cheeseburgers and Pepsi courtesy of the International Red Cross before leaving Baghdad for Jordan.
While applauding their release as a "positive" move, U.S. officials said Monday that no formal peace with Iraq would be granted until all missing U.S. soldiers are returned or accounted for. President Bush also insisted that "every single one" of the Kuwaiti citizens taken hostage by retreating Iraqi forces also must be returned.
There are believed to be at least six more American POWs and about three dozen U.S. servicemen listed as missing in action, who may also have been taken prisoner.
But as allied officials prepared for the reciprocal release today of 300 Iraqi captured soldiers, they warily monitored the spreading civil strife to determine what effect it might have on Iraq's ability to live up to its other obligations under a permanent cease-fire.
Reports reaching other countries in the region, including Iran, Syria and Kuwait, said that defeated soldiers streaming north from the battlefields of the Persian Gulf War have joined Shiite fundamentalists, long opposed to President Saddam Hussein, in an effort to bring down his government.
Troops from the loyalist Republican Guard were said to be backing Saddam, turning their remaining heavy tanks and big artillery pieces on the protesters.
Iran's official news agency said that the mayor of Basra, the second-largest city in Iraq, had died in a pitched battle there, along with a provincial governor and Saddam's oldest son, Udai.
At the Pentagon on Monday, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Kelly said that U.S. officials were unable to confirm any of those specific details.
But he said that allied reconnaissance flights over the region revealed tank maneuvers near Basra involving two different types of equipment, one of them used by the Iraqi army and the other believed to be used by the Republican Guard.
Kelly described the situation in southern Iraq as "chaos."
"Whatever's going on, it is not good," he said.
Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, repeated Monday the Bush administration's desire that Saddam be replaced by his own people.
"We hope a regime will emerge in Baghdad that is committed finally to living in peace with its neighbors," Powell told a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention.
Administration officials carefully ducked all questions about whether allied forces might be used to assist the Iraqi rebels if their help is requested.
Kelly noted, though, that simply returning the Iraqi POWs is likely to "exacerbate the situation a great deal. . . . Beaten armies can be politically dangerous."
Besides the 300 POWs scheduled to be released today, there are at least another 63,000 Iraqi soldiers still being held by allied forces.
The release Monday of the first 10 allied prisoners was in compliance with an accord struck in the desert Sunday between Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf and Iraqi military leaders. The Iraqis also have turned over information about the location of land and sea mines as the allies requested.
The former allied prisoners, all wearing bright yellow overalls with the letters "P.W." on front and back, were handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross, then driven to Jordan in a Red Cross convoy.
They arrived in Jordan late Monday, then flew aboard an Air Force transport plane to the gulf emirate of Bahrain, to be examined aboard a U.S. Navy hospital ship there. They arrived in Bahrain early today.
"They said the treatment was good and improved in the last few weeks. They did not talk about physical abuse," said the U.S. ambassador in Jordan, Roger Harrison.
"It's a matter of logistics," Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, Abdul Amir al-Anbari said, said of the release of the remaining allied prisoners. "Otherwise we are prepared to repatriate all so-called coalition POWs [today] if the airport facilities allow."
Kuwait's Crown Prince Saad al Abdullah al Sabah returned to Kuwait City on Monday after seven months in exile to preside as military governor over his newly liberated country.
Also on Monday, the White House announced that Bush will meet one-on-one with allied leaders in the coming weeks to develop a blueprint for long-term stablity in the Persian Gulf region.
by CNB