Iraq Calls Up Million For Military Saddam Steps Up Challenge To U.N. Inspections, Sanctions

The government of President Saddam Hussein called on Iraqis across the country Sunday to report for military training and said it was ready for a “holy war” against United Nations sanctions that have crippled its economy.

A day after Saddam threatened to expel all U.N. weapons inspectors, Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said 1 million men and women would be given weapons and begin training next month.

Echoing remarks Saddam made on Saturday, Ramadan called for “a great jihad” - a holy war - “to lift the sanctions.”

Whether the announcement was another act of bravado on a weekend when Iraq is commemorating the seventh anniversary of the start of the Persian Gulf war, or a signal that Saddam may be preparing for consequences of his defiance of the United Nations, the Iraqi moves are a direct challenge to the United States and the United Nations disarmament system that Baghdad was instrumental in creating after the war in 1991.

Richard Butler, chief of the U.N. inspection commission, was due in Baghdad today to discuss the current standoff over inspections.

A team led by an American who Iraq says is a spy - William Scott Ritter Jr. - was blocked twice last week from sites it wanted to visit.

In calling for a jihad, Ramadan said “there is no alternative to this after seven years of patience and cooperation with the United Nations and its committees,” the Iraqi News Agency reported.

“Instead, America, the guardian of the Security Council and its committees, has been unrelenting in its aggressive position to extend sanctions and expose the Iraqi people to death, starvations and illness,” he said. “The Iraqi leadership and its people reject this and are ready for jihad.”

The military call-up announced Sunday added a new element to the tension surrounding Butler’s arrival on Monday.

In two days of talks with Iraqi officials, he is expected to ask for unrestricted access for his inspectors and an end to disputes over the composition of inspection teams, which Iraq says have too many Americans.