Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 3, 1991 TAG: 9103030090
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: KUWAIT CITY LENGTH: Medium
As the first nine Cabinet members began operating in this capital since Kuwait's liberation from Iraq, a senior government official said that the country remains too dangerous for the immediate return of the emir, Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah. But he said the crown prince and prime minister, Sheik Saad al Abdullah al Sabah, would return to head an interim military government within the next five days.
"It's a country without light, without water, a country without food supply; it's a country with fear," said Abdul-Rahman Awadi, minister of state for Cabinet affairs.
Hundreds of thousands - perhaps millions - of rounds of ammunition left by fleeing Iraqi soldiers remain scattered throughout the city and in the hands of young men now parading the streets with guns, Awadi said.
Police stations throughout the city reported that armed Kuwaitis were storming into the stations demanding access to Palestinian prisoners accused of collaborating with the Iraqi occupiers. "We want to kill them," one Kuwaiti armed with a semiautomatic rifle said.
Sporadic gunbattles continued between military forces and gunmen still holed up in fortified houses in isolated areas of the city.
"There are people who have become happy with their weapons," Awadi said of the hundreds of resistance fighters who initially took control of security in the capital before military forces began moving in.
Awadi pledged that all Palestinians and other foreign nationals arrested and accused of collaborating with the occupying Iraqis will be given fair trials and treated humanely while in Kuwaiti custody.
"There's a lot of hard feeling in their hearts," he said of the Kuwaitis who lived for months under Iraqi occupation. "But they know that killing only produces more killing."
In the government's first public statement since returning to Kuwait, it was clear that the ruling Sabah family is prepared to make concessions to the thousands of Kuwaitis who stayed behind during the seven-month Iraqi occupation and to other opposition figures who are now demanding greater public participation in government.
Awadi, in a strikingly conciliatory address to reporters at a downtown hotel, said several Cabinet ministers will be replaced and full parliamentary elections will be held within three to six months.
Kuwait's Parliament was dissolved in 1986 during the Iran-Iraq War, after pro-Iranian Shiites launched bomb attacks and made an attempt on the emir's life.
New elections were held last June, two months before the Iraqi invasion, for a new transitional assembly, but pro-democracy activists boycotted the vote because a large number of the delegates were to be appointed rather than elected.
by CNB