All U.N. Inspectors Will Get Bum’s Rush, Saddam Threatens End Sanctions Or Face Holy War, He Warns

President Saddam Hussein threatened Saturday to expel all U.N. arms inspectors from Iraq in six months if his government is not cleared of suspicions about its weapons programs and if the sanctions that have devastated the country’s economy are not lifted.

His threat came in a speech marking the seventh anniversary of the start of the Persian Gulf war. He spoke two days before the chief U.N. arms inspector, Richard Butler, is to arrive in Baghdad for critical talks on a new standoff over weapons inspections.

Iraq has claimed regularly since 1991 that it has accounted for all its weapons of mass destruction, but evidence found by U.N. inspectors has shown otherwise time and again.

The United States and some other nations fear that Iraq may still have biological and chemical weapons. If inspections are not completed in six months, and Saddam carries through on his threat to end them then, the Clinton administration will be under tremendous pressure to act, even though military attacks would be unpopular in many capitals, especially in the Middle East.

In his speech, which lasted nearly an hour, Saddam quoted the Koran and Old Testament prophets recognized by Muslims to portray himself as the fearless defender of Arabs and all poor nations against the “American tyrant.” He said the Iraqi people and their leaders were “determined to launch a great jihad” - a holy war - to get the sanctions lifted.

But he also made a plea for a new approach to the impasse with the United Nations. He renewed calls for talks to circumvent the United States, which has held out for the strictest Iraqi accountability. He said that since the “American” disarmament plan had failed, other avenues should be tried.

Saddam couched his threat in an endorsement of a November recommendation by the Iraqi National Assembly that Iraq cease cooperating with the inspections ordered by the security council as part of the 1991 cease-fire. The recommendation is now before the Revolutionary Command Council, the highest-ranking government body in Iraq.

The day began with the wailing of air-raid sirens as a reminder of the start of the Persian Gulf war in 1991. Saddam said he was aiming his speech, shown on tape on television Saturday morning, to a new generation of Iraqis, “who may still have to shed blood and be martyrs.” He seamlessly rewrote the history of Jan. 17, 1991, by leaving out what had caused the war: his army’s occupation of Kuwait five months earlier.

“On that day at 2:30 in the morning,” he said, “the Americans invaded. Bombs and rockets fell on Baghdad.” Iraq won that war, he said - still calling it “the mother of all battles” - because “Iraq refused to comply and surrender.”

Saddam hurled epithets at the United States, calling Washington at various points “neo-imperialist,” “flesh-mongering” and “leprous.” The speech was simultaneously interpreted in English for the benefit of international television networks.

“The United States is full of treachery against all nations and all people,” Saddam said, adding a warning to Latin Americans and Southeast Asians that their financial problems are a manifestation of the American conspiracy to “rule all four corners of the world.”

In this very personalized government, officials seemed to have little or no advance knowledge of the president’s remarks. On Friday night, some did not know exactly when the speech would be delivered, and learned the time from network television crews gathered here to await Butler’s arrival Monday.

Butler is expected to press the Iraqis for access to forbidden sites and to discuss Baghdad’s repeated charges that the arms inspection teams have too many Americans.

After the speech Saturday, Butler is likely to add to his agenda the issue of a time frame for completing inspections, Iraqi and U.N. officials say. Butler was in Bahrain on the way to Baghdad, where he has meetings scheduled for Monday and Tuesday.