Hussein Reportedly Visits Front Lines

AMMAN, Jordan â€”  Iraqi President Saddam Hussein met with senior officers on the war front in southern Kuwait and indicated that Iraq’s heavy materiel losses have pushed it past the point of negotiation or surrender, his official Iraqi News Agency reported Thursday.

Hussein, whose reported visit to the front lines took place amid heavy allied bombardments Wednesday, was quoted as telling his general staff that the “materiel losses suffered by Iraq can only be compensated by a victory.�

He added, “It is only a matter of time before the enemy becomes convinced it has done all it can and that the Iraqis are determined to confront it and triumph over it.�

The news agency quoted the Iraqi leader as telling his commanders that only 90 of their soldiers and officers were killed in the first five days of the war--a toll he attributed to the allies’ tactic of high-altitude bombing, missile strikes and their “cowardice and fear� of confronting Iraq’s army on the ground.

Meanwhile, in the Iraqi capital, state-run Baghdad Radio announced that the allied forces continued to pound Iraqi targets, flying 15 air strikes Wednesday and early Thursday. Independent sources on the Iranian side of Iraq’s eastern frontier confirmed the intensity of the bombing.

Iran’s state-run Islamic Republic News Agency quoted residents of the Iranian border city of Khorramshahr as saying their houses shook from bomb detonations 25 miles away in Basra, Iraq’s southernmost city. Refugees fleeing to Jordan on Tuesday had also reported heavy aerial assaults there.

Basra is 90 miles north of Iraq’s front lines in Kuwait and serves as the logistics and supply center for the estimated 545,000 Iraqi troops dug in on Kuwait’s border with Saudi Arabia.

Analysts in Jordan said the inspection tour by Hussein, who has been seen just once in public since the U.S.-led aerial attack began a week ago, was clearly meant to boost morale and look for signs of weakness in the loyalty of his own battlefield command structure.

Throughout his speech, Hussein stressed that Iraq’s battle plan is a waiting game and that he is saving his military resources for an inevitable ground war, the Iraqi news agency reported.

“The American aggressors and their allies deluded themselves into believing they could carry out an overwhelming attack against Iraq, but they are disappointed,� the news agency quoted him as saying. He continued:

“They will never defeat us, nor will they escape the punishment they deserve. They used all their means to achieve their purpose, including cruise missiles and a great number of airplanes. The forces of arrogance and evil even bombed us with lies and propaganda to cover their miscalculations and black wishful thinking.�

There was no independent confirmation Thursday of the news agency’s report of Hussein’s visit to the front.

Iraq closed its border with Jordan for a second consecutive day, a move that blocked fleeing refugees who could provide independent accounts of events inside Iraq. The border closing was not officially reported by the Iraqi government.

Just over 12,000 refugees, mainly Egyptians, Sudanese and Yemenis, have fled embattled Iraq since the war began.

Humanitarian agencies here fear there may be tens of thousands more refugees either waiting on the Iraqi side of the 50-mile-wide no-man’s-land between Iraq and Jordan or still making their way through Iraq’s war-torn countryside.