Wow. Lots of stuff today already. In the first instance, Ara​bic​News​.com (and oth­ers) reports that Sad­dam Hus­sein has shown a new will­ing­ness to work with the United Nations and thanked Saudi Ara­bia for its lack of coop­er­a­tion with the Amer­i­cans. The Kuwaitis on the other hand, in a show of Gulf War I grat­i­tude, said it was OK with them for the United States to bivouc on Kuwaiti bases. (This may end up prov­ing more trou­ble than its worth, per­haps, since the Kuwaiti daily al-Rai al Aam is report­ing that a soli­dier for the emi­rate was caught try­ing to sneak into the al-Doha base there for the pur­pose of attack­ing Amer­i­cans. With Kuwaiti army troops and other peo­ple attempt­ing may­hem against the United States on a semi-regular basis, Kuwait may prove a shaky ally.)
At the same time, the Wash­ing­ton Post reports that the United States is pre­pared to ten­der its final Iraq res­o­lu­tion to the Secu­rity Coun­cil, pos­si­bly as soon as tomor­row, and that it wants a vote by the end of the week. It’s the third such res­o­lu­tion and is aimed at allay­ing the con­cerns of Rus­sia and France, since Britain is on board and China has indi­cated it won’t sign on to such a pro­posal, but it won’t veto it either. Mex­ico, which has many of the same con­cerns as France and Rus­sia, said it was “opti­mistic” a solu­tion would be found soon, indi­cat­ing the Amer­i­cans are get­ting closer to a deal.
Also, Sad­dam gives his first inter­view in 12 years, accord­ing to the Egypt­ian oppo­si­tion weekly, Al Usbou’. It’s full of juicy lit­tle tid­bits, includ­ing the novel the­ory that the United States will carve up all Arab lands into coun­tries the size of Yemen (or Israel) so they may be gov­erned bet­ter by an Amer­i­can viceroy­alty. A high­light of the inter­view:

Nas­sar: “Mr. Pres­i­dent, I want to ask you some­thing that I already know, but would like your con­fir­ma­tion. Do you have Kuwaiti pris­on­ers that you did not release as yet, know­ing that Kuwait is demand­ing their release as a con­di­tion for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion?“
Sad­dam: “You know, and every­one else knows, that I issued a deci­sion to release all pris­on­ers, polit­i­cal and crim­i­nal, Arab and Iraqis. Except for the spies who worked for Israel and the U.S. We released even mur­der­ers, on con­di­tion that an agree­ment was reached between the fam­i­lies of the mur­der­ers and the fam­i­lies of the vic­tims, and that the amnesty was the will of both sides. The jails in Iraq became the only jails in the world, and in his­tory, with­out occu­pants.“
Nas­sar: “…And the war­dens have a prob­lem, Mr. Pres­i­dent, they have to look for a job since the jails are empty…“
Sad­dam: “We shall turn the jails into shel­ters for orphans, the vic­tims of Amer­i­can daily mis­sile attacks on the country’s south and north, and on Baghdad’s neigh­bor­hoods, while the world con­science remains indif­fer­ent.” (Ed. — Emphasis added. Orphans!)

Prime min­is­ter Ariel Sharon backed up Saddam’s state­ment that the United States was try­ing to make the Mid­dle East safe for Israel by say­ing in an inter­view with The Times that Britain and Amer­ica should attack Iran after they’ve fin­ished con­quer­ing Iraq. British for­eign min­is­ter Jack Straw soundly rejected that idea, thank good­ness. (You can read the entire inter­view here. Also, Sharon has agreed to Beyamin Netanyahu’s demands for early elec­tions on Feb. 4, 2003, but grum­bled that Israel doesn’t need elec­tions right now. Pales­tin­ian offi­cials urged Israelis to vote for “a lead­er­ship capa­ble of mak­ing peace,” while Islamic Jihad said elec­tions would make no difference.)