The Gulf Crisis and New World Order — Page 233
/11 the 11ame of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful THIRTEENTH FRIDAY SERMON FEBRUARY 15, 1991 LATEST SITUATION OF THE GULF WAR After reciting the Opening Chapter of the Holy Quran, AI-Fatiha, Hazoor said: I revert to my continued commentary on the ongoing war in the Middle East. Unless we understand its background - what caused the conflagration - why did it spark off - i. e. unless we are fully cognisant of its total perspective, we would be unable to redraw the map of a new world. Presently, a flurry of peace making activities is being observed which is motivated by two advantages that the U. S. could possibly gain, but before stating these, let me mention what is happening. The U. S. created an impression for the rest of the world, prior to their aerial bombardment spree that the U. S. desired peace and it bad repeatedly presented reasonable peace proposals to Saddam Hussein which had been repeatedly rejected by him. Now in this second phase of the war the U. S. has re-initiated the same peace making campaign. This is motivated by the fact that even though the U. S. has much greater military superiority and can inflict greater damages on Iraq, yet the U. S. casualties would be siz. able. The advantages sought by this U. S. led peace initiative may be summed up as follows: To get Saddam Hussein to visualise his potential losses and vacate Kuwait under duress. To mobiliz. e the Iraqi public opinion against him on the assumption that the entire catastrophe could have been averted by just withdrawing from Kuwait. This would have solved all objectives, i. e. the evacuation of Kuwait, the disintegration of Iraq and the saving of American lives: the last being of utmost importance to them. Emissaries were repeatedly sent to Baghdad, whether these were from Pakistan or from elsewhere. They all had instructions to present the issue in such a way as if the entire crisis could be resolved and the war everted by simply withdrawing from 233