Kuwait claims Iraq fired mortar into Kuwaiti side of border

The Associated Press 11/12/01 10:34 AM

KUWAIT (AP) -- Iraqi forces are believed to have fired a mortar that landed near a U.N. patrol and observation post on the Kuwaiti side of the border, a spokesman for the international observers said Monday.

The firing took place Sunday morning and nobody was hurt, Daljeet Bagga told The Associated Press. He said the 82mm mortar made a "small crater" in the ground and a cloud of smoke billowing from the site attracted a Kuwaiti police patrol.

The angle of the trajectory "indicated it could have been fired from Safwan inside Iraq," the spokesman for the United Nations Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission said.

The incident, the first of its kind in about three years, was a "very serious matter," and Iraq has been asked to investigate, Bagga said.

Bagga said Kuwaiti border police have also complained that 15 minutes before the mortar firing, two Iraqis "in khakis" were spotted firing several rounds from a Kalashnikov in the direction of the Kuwaiti border. Nobody was hurt and observers were not able to find any bullets, he said. Baghdad has been asked to investigate that incident, too.

The desert frontier between the two countries has been closed since the 1991 Gulf War that liberated Kuwait from a seven-month Iraqi occupation. U.N. observers have been patrolling a demilitarized zone along the border since the end of the war. The zone, which is barren and uninhabited, extends three miles into Kuwait and six miles into Iraq.

Also Monday, an Iraqi opposition group said that two men who worked for Iraqi intelligence before defecting to the West have reported seeing 80 Kuwaiti men in a secret prison near Baghdad as recently as last year, almost a decade after they were captured during the Gulf War.

The London-based Iraqi National Congress, which is campaigning for the overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, said in a statement that the defectors saw the Kuwaiti men at the Iraqi intelligence camp at Salman Pak, some 19 miles south of Baghdad. Few details on the defectors, including their current whereabouts, were released.

The dissident group, in statement faxed from London to The Associated Press in Cairo, quoted the unidentified defectors as saying they worked at the prison from 1995 until 2000 guarding the Kuwaiti prisoners.

The dissident group said the guards were not supposed to know the prisoners' names but managed to learn some. The congress did not release the names but said they were confirmed by Kuwaiti sources as being among those listed as missing by Kuwait's government after the country's liberation from Iraqi invaders by a U.S.-led alliance in February 1991.

Under the terms of the cease-fire that ended the Gulf War, Iraq is supposed to release all Kuwaiti POWs. Iraq denies it holds any Kuwaiti prisoner; Kuwait claims that 600 Kuwaitis and other Arabs are still in Iraq's prisons.

In Kuwait on Monday, Rabii al-Adsani, the director general of the State Committee for War Prisoners, told The Associated Press the report was "further confirmation that the prisoners are in Iraq." He said dissidents had given similar reports in the past.

A spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress, Sharif Ali bin al-Hussein, said the defectors' allegation that Kuwaitis were being held "is further proof that Saddam Hussein continues to break international law and all norms of civilized behavior."

"The fact that (Saddam) is holding these prisoners, together with mounting evidence of his involvement in international terrorism, confirm that his regime is in material breach of the U.N. cease-fire resolutions," Sharif Ali said.

Iraqi dissidents have speculated Saddam may be linked to the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States. If proven, such allegations could result in renewed U.S. attacks on Iraq. Proof that Iraq has violated the Gulf War cease-fire also could result in international pressure on Saddam.

The Kuwaiti prisoners were said to have been held at a secret site at Salman Pak. The site, established in the mid-1970s, was known before the war as a place dissidents were taken for interrogation and torture and where Saddam's agents received military and intelligence training.

The complex overlooking the Tigris River is camouflaged by date palm trees and surrounded by a barbed-wired fence.

The defectors told the dissident group that the prisoners were held in an underground cell with one large window near the ceiling. The defectors said other Kuwaiti prisoners may be held in other intelligence prisons.

The defectors said the prisoners were in good condition and were fed regularly and given medical care when required.

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2001