Saddam urges Arabs to 'rise up'

Hussein used his speech to attack Israel and the U.S.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has urged Palestinians to intensify their uprising against Israel.

"Rise up, dear ones, for whom we are ready to sacrifice anything," he said in a television address marking Iraq's national day.

"Say to your enemies, the enemies of our Arab nation who are the foul Jewish usurpers, their covetous allies and all the colonialists and their object servants: Stop abusing the Arab nation."

Although he made no direct reference to the United Nations sanctions imposed against Iraqi following the Gulf war Hussein accused the U.S. and its allies of trying to "slaughter" the Iraqi people.

In the 30-minutes address -- commemorating the 1968 coup by the ruling Baath Party -- he also avoided naming Arab countries opposed to him, as he has done in the past.

Instead, he referred to them as servants of the enemy.

He said Iraq will "eventually disappoint all its enemies."

In an apparent reference to the U.N. oil-for-food program, Hussein said Iraq will not depend on oil alone as "a source of its power and endurance."

"It certainly won't be a point of weakness or a hole in the wall of our national bastion," he said.

The program, begun in 1996, allows Iraq to sell oil in order to buy food, medicine and essential goods that are distributed to the Iraqi people under U.N. monitoring.

Hussein concluded the speech with a traditional attack on the U.S: "Long live Iraq and long live Palestine. Down to Hell with all conspiracies and evil schemes. Down with all the debased resolutions of America."

Analysts said the latter was a reference to Washington-led efforts to transform the UN embargo on Iraq into "smart sanctions" targeting military imports.

Saddam's speech came two weeks before the 11th anniversary of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait -- which provoked the Gulf war -- on August 2.