Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 15, 1991 TAG: 9103150346
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: KUWAIT CITY LENGTH: Medium
Jabbar covered his face with his hands as he stepped from a blue-and-white Kuwait Airways jet and then stooped to kiss the ground at Kuwait International Airport.
"It's wonderful to be home," the emir said as a marching band struck up Kuwait's national anthem. Some of the assembled dignitaries said that the soft-spoken monarch was crying.
As the marching band gave way to the rhythmic drumbeats of gulf Arab warriors, a troupe of Kuwaiti men in traditional dress began waving swords and chanting the words to a traditional victory cry, ecstatically encircling the emir's black Mercedes as U.S. Army special forces units assigned to guard the monarch looked helplessly out from the chanting, cheering, sword-waving crowd.
However, the absence of many Kuwaitis along the streets as the emir's car made its way to a temporary home in the Al Nozha district of Kuwait city evoked the troubled country to which the sheik has returned, a country in which many Kuwaitis are without electricity, running water, fresh food or basic supplies more than two weeks after liberation.
Jabbar has pledged to revive the 1962 constitution and restore the Parliament, suspended since 1986, by way of new national elections. But in a country teetering on the edge of instability, with much of the populace armed with weapons abandoned by the fleeing Iraqis, the government has refused to say precisely when it will hold elections and suspend the present state of martial law.
by CNB