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Iraq assails Mubarak

for asylum offer

BAGHDAD: An Iraqi daily on Sunday hit at President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt for offering political asylum to President Saddam Hussein to solve the problems of the Iraqi people.

"Shame on you, Hosni," said Babel newspaper, published by Saddam's eldest son, Uday.

"Saddam, like the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, shall not leave Iraq a barren land for the hyenas, whether a relative or a stranger," said Babel.

Babel published news of Mubarak's offering the Iraqi president political asylum if the move would spare bloodshed and end the suffering of the Iraqi people.

Mubarak's comments were made in a an interview with the London-based al-Hayat newspaper published on Saturday.

It was the first such public offer made since Saddam's two sons-in-laws, including the mastermind of Iraq's military industries, defected to Jordan with their familes on August 8.

Mubarak said he had already proposed the offer to King Hussein of Jordan a week before Lieutenant General Hussein Kamel Hassan defected. There has been no indication the Iraqi leader is seeking asylum.

In the interview the Egyptian leader said that he renewed the offer.

On Thursday, Uday's newspaper also slammed Mubarak for saying that he wished ot see Iraq without Saddam.

"He (Mubarak) is dim-witted and a liar," the influential daily said.

KUWAIT: A Kuwaiti border patrol arrested two Iraqi soldiers and an Iraqi student for entering the Gulf state illegally, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

Soldiers Adel Abou Souda, 20, and Qahtan Ibrahim, 25, and student Firas Riyadh, 19, said they sought asylum in Kuwait or deportation to a third country due to bad living conditions in Iraq, al-Anba newspaper reported.

Earlier in August Kuwaiti troops arrested another group of Iraqi civilians and military personnel for illegal entry. As a result of that infiltration troops stationed near the border were ordered to intensify monitoring of the frontier.

Iraq has been under strict economic sanctions since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Iraq-Kuwait border posts have been closed to normal traffic since the 1991 Gulf War that ended Iraq's seven-month occupation, but Iraqis have regularly infiltrated to scavenge for equipment left on the battlefields, smuggle liquor or seek work or asylum in third countries.

A 32-nation U.N. observer force monitors a 15 km (nine mile)-wide demilitarised zone that straddles the frontier.-Reuter