DESPERATELY SEEKING SADDAM
Trevor McDonald on what it's
like to interview Iraq's dictator (eventually)
TO BE given one of the rare opportunities to interview President Saddam Hussein is to be allowed a fascinating insight into the way he runs his country. Two impressions are striking. The first is the sense of raw power evident at the mere mention of his name; coupled with those huge, ubiquitous and inescapable portraits of the President. The second is the feeling of isolation. Iraqis feel that keenly. Not only is their country left out of the vast web of diplomatic traffic which now charts the course of internation- al relations, but their President is also cut off from them by a wall of suspicion, secre- cy, fear and silence. That silence, or the conspicuous reluctance to express an opin- ion about anything of social, economic or political relevance, defines life in Baghdad. No one talks about such issues unless man- dated to do so.
My colleagues and I were collected in two cars driven by soldiers and under the command of a major. The major's job was to take us to a guest-house, where we would await the President's call. The major interpreted his responsibilities in strict terms. He wouldn't be drawn on anything about the interview. Since that took in some pretty basic information about where he was taking us and how long we'd be away, our conversation was strained. My disquiet increased when it became clear that our driver had no idea where he was going either. That was the point at which, sinking into dark introspection, I abruptly ended my attempt to converse with the major. In its place an extraordinary pan- tomime ensued.
At the approach of every large round- about as we sped out of Baghdad, our driver, who appeared too terrified to speak and whose eyes were glued to the middle dis- tance as though his life depended on it, would slow the car down to wait for a hint about which exit he should take. The major's demeanour raised the suspense mercilessly. In almost every instance he waited until the very last moment before he tapped on the dashboard to say in a monotone voice, 'Sec- ond turning', or, 'First exit.' Every time it happened, I could feel the tension gradually rise and then quickly ebb away from the vicinity of our driver's shoulders. The relief when we stopped at a smart address on the outskirts of Baghdad was palpable. We were greeted by a bespecta- cled head-waiter figure. He was the quintessence of cheerfulness. He showed us to our rooms and told me proudly that I had been allocated the best of them. Then I let him down. We had arrived late in the afternoon and he, solicitous as ever, inquired what I would like for breakfast. Believing either that I had misheard him, or worse, that his English was imperfect, I suggested that he might be referring to that evening's dinner. A suspicion of a frown crossed his countenance before he said, mean breakfast.'
`Does that mean,' I enquired, 'that the interview with the President will not take place this evening?' It seemed logical. Like the major before him, he knew nothing about that. He was not one of those man- dated to speak about such things.
Twice in the course of the next 48 hours, we were rushed into grabbing our equip- ment, scrambling into cars and setting off to meet the President, or so I thought. Twice these summons turned out to be false alarms, of the kind which on reflection could never have been anything else. When we were summoned to the interview for real, there was an unmistakable seriousness of purpose and, considering that we had been hanging around for countless hours, a belated and rather annoying sense of urgency. We were told to prepare to leave immediately and without our cameras, which had been so carefully checked and screened by Iraqi security authorities. Our protests were met with crushing silence.
I desperately tried to control my anger as we careered off into the night in a large convoy of cars. I was in the lead vehicle, and this time all the drivers were ignorant of our destination. They stopped on three separate occasions for instructions. In the darkness, the area surrounding the presidential palace to which we were driven appeared only lightly guarded. Appearances were decep- tive. Once inside, everything we had was taken away. I was deprived of my watch, my ring, my pen and my notes. It was done wordlessly. I screamed sufficiently loudly to get my notes back and more shouting got me a substitute pen. Our female producer was strip searched and security men took a great interest in the soles of the shoes our crew wore.
After that, meeting the President felt like the anticlimax of the evening. Saddam Hus- sein was courteous and businesslike. He is a big man and his presence is imposing. We shook hands and posed for the obligatory photographs, while the crew, deprived of their cameras, tried to make sense of the ones the Iraqis had mysteriously provided. I say 'mysteriously' because we'd earlier been told they had none. The President's replies to my questions were uncompromising. I had begun by asking him whether invading a neighbouring country and raping its people was 'a very Arab thing to do'. The President smiled, and, side-stepping the gist of the question, asked me whether it was a very British thing to do. I got nowhere with the follow-up to that. Saddam Hussein made no apologies for the invasion of Kuwait. To all my protests that it was a sovereign nation and recognised as such by the UN, I was given the expected lecture about Iraq's his- toric claim to its neighbour's territory. His reply to my point about the abomination of hostage-taking was interesting. He said that in times of war such actions become dire necessities and illustrated his answer by reminding me how, during the second world war, the Americans imprisoned Japanese liv- ing in their country and sent them off to camps.
I had one rhetorical trick to play. I would suggest to the President that his soldiers in Iraq were behaving deplorably, he would deny it and I would then reply that in the absence of independent evidence we only had his word for that. Might he therefore not allow us into Kuwait? In the light of what later befell Iraqi troops in Kuwait, that was not my most inspired suggestion. In the event the President came to my rescue. He agreed that we had to accept his word, because the 'security situation' made it impossible for him to allow us there. I've always been grateful for that. One theme ran through the interview. Saddam could not understand why the Americans had become so upset about the invasion and sought to convince me that should they attack Iraq they would become bogged down as they had in Vietnam, and the conflict would engulf the Middle East. By this, he meant that Iraq would bring Israel into the war.
The interview over, the President spent 40 minutes telling me, as we walked around a large room, what appalling people the Kuwaitis were and how they had squan- dered the country's oil revenues in casinos in London and Monte Carlo. Back in my hotel room, I was the toast of officers from the Iraqi Information Ministry. At first, I thought that they were anxious to hear how my interview had gone. They were not. They were asking questions about a Presi- dent they had never met.
The author is anchor-man, News at Ten.
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