
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 2, 1991                   TAG: 9102020277
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: NICOSIA, CYPRUS                                LENGTH: Medium

IRAQ: ALLIED POWS ARE `CRIMINALS'/ PLEAS FOR HUMANE TREATMENT REJECTED

Iraq said Friday that captured allied fliers would be treated as criminals, and not prisoners of war, for allegedly carrying out indiscriminate attacks on civilians, including machine-gunning people on the streets of residential neighborhoods.

In a Radio Baghdad broadcast monitored here, Iraq charged that "the U.S., British, French and Italian pilots . . . have deliberately bombarded purely residential districts and civilian installations. . . . They have killed very large numbers of women, children and old people in extreme cold blood."

The attacks, the radio said, include "machine guns to kill pedestrians in streets and alleys."

Although the official radio clearly was intensifying its effort to persuade the world that the U.S.-led coalition seeking to drive Iraq from occupied Kuwait is massacring innocent civilians, no figures or examples beyond the stated claims were given.

In previous broadcasts, amid all its charges of indiscriminate attacks on civilians, Iraq reported that 320 civilians have been killed and 400 wounded.

The allies say they have flown more than 35,000 missions, of which more than half were combat sorties. They have repeatedly stressed that their pilots are under orders to make every effort to avoid hitting civilians and non-military buildings but concede that some civilian casualties were almost inevitable.

Until now, Iraq has not disavowed the Geneva accords governing captured enemy service personnel, although it has disregarded the major provisions dealing with identification, treatment and internment.

But in describing the allied fliers as criminals, Radio Baghdad seemed to responding to American threats to prosecute Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and other ranking Iraqi officials as war criminals for, among other things, mistreating allied POWs.

In fact, Radio Baghdad responded in kind to Bush, calling him, British Prime Minister John Major, French President Francois Mitterrand and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia "war criminals."

"They should know that they will not be pardoned, but that they will be chased personally and that every one of them will receive the punishment he deserves."

The broadcast gave no indication how they would punish prisoners treated as criminals. So far, captured allied personnel have been paraded in public, shown on television and held at strategic locations, all violations of the Geneva agreements.

Allied officials also charge the Iraqis with physically and psychologically abusing the prisoners, disregarding their obligation under the accords to remove them from harm's way.

by CNB