Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 7, 1991 TAG: 9103070279
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From The New York Times/ and The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: AMMAN, JORDAN LENGTH: Medium
Arab diplomats here say Saddam, who also ordered roadblocks around the capital and gave cash bonuses to loyalist troops, could be expanding an internal crackdown by employing remaining units of the Republican Guards routed in the Persian Gulf War.
That sense of concern was reinforced Wednesday when Iraqi officials said most Western journalists would be expelled from the country by Friday, and no others would be allowed to enter for at least a week.
In the week since Iraq's army was smashed and its soldiers sent into haphazard retreat, dissent and rebellion have seethed in southern and northern Iraq.
Shiite Muslims, who form 55 percent of Iraq's 18 million people, have risen in the south and Kurds have claimed their own revolt in the north. Saddam's 12-year-old government is rooted in the Sunni Muslim Arab minority.
Reuters reported Wednesday that the Republican Guards were in the streets of the capital and had put up roadblocks on its approaches, suggesting an effort to tighten security to prevent rebellion from spilling into the capital.
Saddam's government showed every sign of being in control as it carried out an exchange of prisoners of war with the American-led coalition.
The prisoner exchange, overseen by the International Committee of the Red Cross, took 294 Iraqi soldiers from a prison camp in northern Saudi Arabia to Baghdad. A return flight brought to Riyadh what Iraq said were the last 35 allied prisoners it held, including 15 Americans.
At the military command, officers said they were satisfied that Iraq had indeed released all American prisoners, although another 28 Americans remain listed as missing in action. Fourteen of the missing were aboard an AC-130 gunship that crashed Jan. 31 into the Persian Gulf, where the wreckage has been found.
Given the outcome of the war, Iraqi officials may have no choice other than to be accommodating. While Iraq says that it holds no more prisoners, more than 60,000 Iraqi soldiers remain in POW camps in Saudi Arabia.
An Iraqi military delegation is scheduled to meet here today with American and Saudi officers to discuss the eventual return of those men to Iraq. But still to be resolved, according to Marine Brig. Gen. Richard Neal, deputy director of operations, is the fate of Iraqis not wishing to return.
The replacement of Interior Minister Sameer Mohamed Abdul-Wahab with Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, was announced on the Baghdad radio as allied officials in Saudi Arabia said Republican Guard forces had apparently turned the tide of a revolt in Shiite-dominated portions of southern Iraq. The Kurdish rebels, however, claimed Wednesday to have occupied towns in the Kurdish-speaking north.
Majid belongs to a clan that has intermarried with Saddam's family in the Tikrit region north of Baghdad.
by CNB