Iraq concedes non-aligned summit - UPI Archives (original) (raw)

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein gave up hosting next month's summit of the 96-nation non-aligned movement in the Iraqi capital, apparently because of threats from a pro-Iranian group to kill the participants.

'Iraq does not insist that the conference be held in Baghdad,' Hussein said Tuesday on official Baghdad Radio.

'Iraq will take part in the conference even if held in Tehran,' he said. 'We proposed that the seventh conference (of the movement) be held in India if this country so desires.'

The move, suggested by Cuba, followed a threat issued last week by an Iranian-backed terror group vowing to kill the heads of state coming to the conference. The 'fifth column' threat was carried over Tehran radio.

There was no immediate response from New Delhi, where officials from Iraq, Iran and Cuba have been meeting with Indian officials since the weekend in an effort to salvage the summit meeting.

In the Gulf war, tank and artillery battles raged for a second day Tuesday in an upsurge of fighting around the strategic oil port of Basra, which Iran has attempted to capture in five major offensives since its invasion July 13.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Saadun Hammadi has been on an official visit to New Delhi for the past three days.

Iranian parliamentary speaker Hojatoleslam Rafsanjani arrived in New Delhi Tuesday for talks on the location of the seventh non-aligned summit, originally scheduled to begin Sept. 6 in Baghdad.

The shifting of the summit site from Baghdad to New Delhi came at the suggestion of Soviet-allied Cuba, whose President Fidel Castro is now chairman of the non-aligned movement, Indian Foreign Minister Narasimha Rao said.

Iran has vehemently objected to the scheduling of the conference in Baghdad and its warplanes have unsuccessfully attempted to bomb the convention center where the conference was to be held.

Hussein said he had proposed the summit be held in India because of that nation's neutrality in the Gulf war. Iraq has spent millions of dollars preparing for the conference.

An Iran-based extremist group calling itself the 'Moslem Revolutionaries of Iraq' broadcast a statement over Tehran radio last week claiming responsibility for the bombing of Iraq's Ministry of Planning Aug. 1.

The bombing reportedly gutted all six stories of the building, killed an unknown number of people and wounded scores of others, including the Greek ambassador to Baghdad.

The Soviet Union, meanwhile, reaffirmed its ties to the government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini when new Soviet Ambassador Vil Konstantinovich Bolderev presented his credentials to Iran's president.

Since the fall of the U.S.-backed shah, the Soviet Union has courted Khomeini's Moslem fundamentalist government despite Iran's opposition to the Soviet occupation of neighboring Afghanistan.