BAGHDAD, Iraq — Saddam Hussein said Monday he was cutting Iraq oil exports for 30 days or until Israel withdraws from Palestinian territories, an announcement that triggered an immediate increase in world oil prices.
Oil Minister Amer Mohammed Rashid said the cutoff took place as Saddam spoke to the nation at about 2 p.m. local time, or 5 a.m. MDT. Gulsum Korkmaz, spokeswoman for the Turkish state-run pipeline company BOTAS, confirmed that Iraq had stopped exporting.
The United States and Europe are the major buyers of Iraqi oil. OPEC says Iraq has a maximum daily production capacity of 2.3 million barrels.
Analysts have said such a boycott, which Saddam had earlier threatened, would not affect world oil supplies because other major members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries have not agreed to join Iraq's call. OPEC would intervene if necessary to offset a shortfall in Iraqi shipments, a source at the oil producers' group said Monday.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, after meeting Monday with Morocco's moderate King Mohammed VI, demanded "a clear statement from Israel that they are beginning to withdraw" from Palestinian territories and "to do it now."
Powell said he had asked the king to counsel Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to halt violence against Israelis. The secretary said he hopes to see Arafat later in the week.
Israel's military presence on the West Bank is having "a significant and severe" impact, Powell declared. "We have a very difficult situation in front of us. We want to see this operation brought to an end as soon as possible."
Mohammed, the first leader to meet with Powell as the secretary began a trip aimed at halting the violence between Israelis and Palestinians, assured Powell that Morocco will be ready to act on a land-for-peace proposal "without any prior conditions" as soon as Israeli troops withdraw from the West Bank. In Washington, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said President Bush conferred Monday with Powell and that envoy Anthony Zinni would meet later in the day with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to reinforce U.S. demands for an immediate withdrawal from the Palestinian territories.
Israel's offensive in the West Bank will continue despite U.S. calls for withdrawal, Sharon told parliament Monday. Helicopter gunships pounded a Palestinian refugee camp and a fire broke out during fighting near Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity.
Addressing a special session of the Knesset, Sharon said he has promised President Bush to expedite the campaign, now in its 11th day.
Sharon said he was willing to meet with Arab leaders without preconditions to discuss a comprehensive peace agreement. Sharon branded Arafat the head of a "terrorist regime."
The heaviest fighting raged in the West Bank city of Nablus and the Jenin refugee camp, where hundreds of gunmen have been battling Israeli soldiers. Israeli officials estimated that more than 100 Palestinians have been killed in the Jenin camp. Two Israeli soldiers were killed and one was seriously wounded in the camp Monday, the military said.
The armed men "seem to have decided to fight to the last, to make the battle as bloody as possible," said the Israeli commander in the area, Brig. Gen. Eyal Shline.
He said many houses in the camp were booby-trapped and that several men with explosives strapped to their bodies have blown themselves up in suicide attacks.
Before daybreak Monday, Israeli attack helicopters began firing missiles at the camp after militants ignored calls to surrender. Jamal Abdel Salam, a camp resident and activist in the Islamic militant Hamas group, said army bulldozers flattened homes and that dozen of houses had already been destroyed.
By early afternoon, Israeli forces controlled almost the entire camp, the army said. The Israeli military said about 150 men put down their weapons and emerged from the camp early Monday. Abdel Salam said only women, children and the elderly left the camp. The militants were staying put, ready to fight to the death, he said.
In Nablus, the West Bank's largest city, smoke rose from the Old City, a densely populated maze of stone buildings and narrow streets. Army officials said troops controlled about half of the Old City and that dozens of gunmen surrendered Monday.
In one rubble-covered alley, gunmen were trying to pull a seriously wounded comrade to safety. One of the rescuers was shot in the leg and fell over the wounded man before both were carried away as helicopters fired machine guns. The incident Sunday was witnessed by Associated Press Television News cameraman Nazeeh Darwazeh, who also saw two bodies lying in the streets, including that of Ahmed Tabouk, a notorious local vigilante feared by many in the Old City.
In Bethlehem, Israeli troops ringing the Church of the Nativity exchanged fire with armed Palestinians holed up in the shrine, built over the grotto where tradition says Jesus was born. A senior Israeli army officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said two border policemen who were shot and wounded by Palestinians threw a smoke grenade into the compound, sparking a fire.
A Palestinian policeman, who was trying to extinguish the fire, was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper, a fellow policeman in the compound said.
Israeli officials and senior Franciscans in Rome, whose clerics are among those inside, appeared increasingly at odds as the standoff stretched into a seventh day.
Sharon told parliament that soldiers would surround the church until the gunmen release the clerics, whom he described as hostages, and surrender. The Franciscans accused Israel of violating a pledge not to attack the church. Church officials said the clerics were not hostages and would remain in the compound.
Referring to Sharon, Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat said that "the man's endgame all along was to dismantle the Palestinian Authority" and that Israel would not find Palestinians to go along with such a plan.
Erekat said Sharon was defying the United States by refusing to stop the offensive immediately. However, U.S. officials have suggested Israel still has a little time before beginning the withdrawal.