Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=7/23/03

TYPE=WORLD OPINION ROUNDUP

TITLE=SADDAM'S TWO SONS KILLED

NUMBER=6-13017

BYLINE=ANDREW GUTHRIE

DATELINE=Washington

EDITOR=Assignments

TELEPHONE=619-3335

CONTENT=

INTRO: The shots that killed Saddam Hussein's sons, Qusay and Uday, are echoing around the world. The foreign press has been quick to respond, both with news stories and with its own comments, and here with an early sampling is V-O-A's ____________ with this [extra] World Opinion Roundup.

TEXT: The men were killed in a violent firefight with U-S forces. They were caught inside a villa in Mosul Tuesday [7-22], after an Iraqi tipped off U-S troops of their presence. Many papers are breathing a sigh of relief, at what is being called in many, the first good news from Iraq in weeks.

London's Times in England puts it this way.

VOICE: Coming after the fruitless search for Osama bin Laden and the weeks in which Saddam and his sons have slipped time and again through the net, the Mosul operation will boost U-S military morale. But it was not an ideal outcome. The sons were the keepers of its most deadly secrets, some of which will have died with them.

TEXT: Across town, a columnist in The Independent notes the Iraqi reaction.

VOICE: Even Baghdad exploded in celebratory, deafening automatic rifle fire at the news. America's hopes -however vain - that the deaths will break the guerrilla resistance to Iraq's U-S occupation troops, all combined last night to give the American occupation a seemingly new and invincible power.

TEXT: In Ireland, Dublin's Irish Independent calls the deaths "a blow of major proportions [sending] a warning to the former dictator of his own deadly danger."

Meanwhile, in France, the Paris daily Liberation posits:

VOICE: The death of the two sons is an unquestionable victory for President Bush and a relief for the Iraqi people.

TEXT: As for German reaction, Nuremberg's Nachrichten says:

VOICE: This would be a weight off the U-S government's mind. The fact that U-S intelligence [has] not been able to trace and arrest Saddam Hussein and his sons, has turned the occupying forces into dilettantes in the eyes of many Arabs.

TEXT: In Westphalia, Muenster's Westfaelische Nachrichten calls the deaths. "the long awaited success for the U-S army in Iraq.

In something of a contradiction of terms, Italy's Le Repubblica from Rome says the killings represent: "the first bloody "sunny day" for George Bush since toppling their father's statue in April.

While in Milan's Il Sole-24-Ore, the deaths are called: "the most important turning point in Iraq since the conquest of Baghdad. The aura of invulnerability Saddam and his sons has been violated."

To the Middle East, where in Tel Aviv, Ha'aretz describes the event as:

VOICE: A moral and practical blow to Saddam and his supporters. It is clear that U-S intelligence is closing in on Saddam Hussein. The raid on the villa wouldn't have taken place without accurate intelligence.

TEXT: For an Arab nation's assessment, Lebanon's An-Nahar from Beirut feels: "Washington's announcement will supply its occupation of Iraq with a lot of morale, rendering it a victory. But that development remains a worthless detail before the other coinciding detail of Iraq's return to the U-N."

To Asia now, where in the land down under, the national Australian from Sydney smirks:

VOICE: The ace of clubs and the ace of hearts are gone - and Iraq is a far better place for their riddance. The killing of the brothers comes at a crucial moment in the post-liberation of Iraq.

TEXT: As for The Sydney Morning Herald, it suggests that: "If Saddam Hussein is still alive, the death of his sons leaves him more than ever alone. [They] were senior advisers and full partners in Saddam's oppression."

Moving to the New World, we check reaction to the North and read in The Ottawa [Ontario] Citizen, from Canada's capital, a repudiation of all the naysayers on Iraq.

VOICE: Presumably, the doom-and-gloomers will hold [Editors: slang for "pause in"] their handwringing on hearing that the 101st Airborne, far from wallowing in a quagmire, has killed Saddam Hussein's two vicious sons. It's as if the critics assume toppling a tyrant, winning a war and reordering a postwar society is a long-weekend project.

TEXT: Lastly to the provincial capital of British Columbia, where Victoria's Times Colonist uses a play on words from Saddam himself.

VOICE: The sons are gone. The finding of [the] sons raises the hope that their father will be captured, perhaps killed, soon. For as long as he is alive his supporters will continue to make life miserable for U-S soldiers in that country.

TEXT: On that note, from Canada's Pacific Coast and the Victoria times Colonist, we conclude this [extra] World Opinion Roundup on the killing of Qusay and Uday Hussein.

NEB/ANG/RH