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Kuwait army on alert

after Iraq defections

KUWAIT: Kuwait has put its army and interior ministry forces on alert as a precaution after the defection of senior Iraqi officials to Jordan, the Gulf state's defence minister said in remarks published on Sunday.

"We have taken all precautions. Our armed forces are on alert. Also on alert are our men in the Interior Ministry," Defence Minister Sheikh Ahmad Hamoud al-Sabah was quoted as saying by the English-language Arab Times.

"We are monitoring the south of Iraq but until this day and this hour there is nothing exceptional or extraordinary."

Lieutenant-General Hussein Kamel Hassan, who ran both Iraq's civil and military industries and helped in the formation of Baghdad's elite force of Republican Guards, fled to Jordan on Tuesday along with his brother, Lieutenant-Colonel Saddam Kamel Hassan, and their two wives, both daughters of Saddam.

The general on Saturday called for the overthrow of the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Kuwait's newspapers have gloated over the defection, saying it spelt trouble for Saddam, who ordered Iraq's 1990-91 occupation of Kuwait. Some columnists praised Jordan for giving political asylum to the general and his entourage.

Ahmad Jarallah, editor in chief of al-Seyasseh and the English-language Arab Times, said Jordan's granting of asylum represented a decisive break between King Hussein and Saddam.

"The divorce between the two opens a new chapter in the struggle against Iraq's rulers that might pave the way for toppling Saddam Hussein," he wrote on Saturday.

"The fact that (his) own blood is giving up on him is a sure sign the regime is dying and that its end could be closer than we imagined," wrote Abdul-Latif al-Duaij in al-Qabas. Meanwhile, A prominent Iraqi opposition leader said on Sunday he might be willing to meet a senior Iraqi defector to try to topple President Saddam Hussein's government, the official Kuwait News Agency reported.

Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, president of the Tehran-based Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said he could hold "political and military meetings" with Lieutenant-General Hussein Kamel Hassan if the aim was to overthrow the government, the agency reported from Tehran.

"Hakim did not rule out the possibility of meeting Kamel if it is meant to protect the Iraqi people's interests and to end the presence in power of Saddam Hussein," the agency reported.

Hakim, a Shi'ite Moslem cleric, has said he plans a popular- military uprising this year to topple Saddam. Commenting on this, he told the Kuwaiti agency: "We have proposed a project that depends mainly on action in the field."

The council played a major role in a failed uprising in south Iraq following the 1991 Gulf War that ended a seven-month Iraqi occupation of Kuwait.

A senior Jordanian told Reuters in Amman that Hussein Kamel had already been in contact with Iraqis at home and abroad about creating "radical changes" in his country.-Reuter