Iraq's state-run media Saturday denounced Western plans to protect Shiite rebels, and Baghdad's defense minister accused Washington and its allies if beating "the drums of war."
Prime Minister Mohammed Hamza al-Zubaidi said Iraq would defend itself against what he called a Western plot with Iran to divide the country and restore colonial domination, the official Iraqi News Agency reported."Iraq firmly rejects any criminal act schemed by the United States, Britain and France" and would unite to "foil the conspiracy," Zubaidi was quoted as saying.
The agency, monitored in Cyprus, also said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had met with senior air force officers but gave no details.
The allies plan a "no-fly" zone to prevent Iraqi aircraft from attacking Shiite Muslims in the southern marshes. A similar zone was established in northern Iraq last year to protect Kurdish rebels.
Zubaidi, a Shiite, charged the United States is "pretending to defend the inhabitants of southern Iraq" but destroyed food warehouses, hospitals, utilities and bridges during Persian Gulf War air raids, the agency reported.
Iraqi Defense Minister Ali Hassan al-Majid said "the drums of war are being beaten" by the United States, France and Britain because they are "terrified" by the postwar reconstruction of Iraq, according to Iraqi radio monitored by the British Broadcasting Corp.
The government-run Al-Jumhouriya newspaper called the allied plan, "part of the Zionist plans aiming at the division of Arab countries."
Al-Qaddissiya, the Defense Ministry's daily, said President Bush, British Prime Minister John Major and French President Francois Mitterrand hoped to bash Iraq to deflect attention from domestic problems.
On Friday, Iraq invited officials the 15 Security Council nations - which include the United States, Britain and France - to visit southern Iraq to see conditions for the Shiites.
Iranian newspapers also voiced concern.
"What is the objective behind aerial defense of bits and pieces of parts of Iraq?" the English-language Tehran Times said in an editorial. "If behind this attempt lurks the intention to partition Iraq, Iran under no circumstances can accept such a division and change of geographical demarcations."
"Sympathy for the Iraqi Shiites by governments like the U.S., France and Britain is very ridiculous," the Farsi-language daily Jomhuri Eslami wrote, according to Iran's Islamic News Agency.
"It seems that the West has not adopted an appropriate propaganda means for deceiving the public opinion of the Muslims in the region and the world and covering up their expansionist policies in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East," the paper wrote.