Press review: Iraqi defiance - Kuwaiti anger

Remembering the dead

Iraqi newspapers marked the 10th anniversary of the country's invasion of Kuwait - or Great Call Day, as the Iraqis call it - in defiant mood, describing it almost invariably as a response to an "American-Zionist", or "Zionist-Colonialist" plot.

Both Al-Thawra and Al-Iraq ran the same report under the headline: "The Great Call Day was a preemptive response to the Zionist-Colonialist conspiratorial scheme against Iraq and the nation".

"Iraq had no choice... but to kill the plot early by force of arms," it said.

"The destruction of Iraq and the elimination of the symbol of the modern Arab renaissance were the last obstacles in helping the US-Zionist plot to succeed in containing the Arab world and weakening it."

Dancing to the US tune

The report concluded by reiterating the Iraqi people's determination to continue their "heroic jihad to break the unjust embargo" and to achieve final victory.

The official Iraqi News Agency spoke in a similar tone.

"Iraq's victory in the war against Iran (1980-1988), and the development of its capabilities, annoyed the Zionist and imperialist forces that used the Kuwaiti regime in place of the Iranian leaders to achieve their base goals," the agency said.

Mourning their sons

It accused the Kuwaiti leadership of having pursued a "perverse policy" of bringing down oil prices "with no justification", dancing to "a tune set out for them by the United States".

If the Iraqi media was unwilling to apologise, then the Kuwaitis were in no mood to forgive, either.

Al-Watan described Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as a "nightmare" and called for him to be overthrown.

"Now after a decade, those who think we have forgotten are mistaken," the paper said.

"We are still looking for the day the nightmare disappears."

Not a time for celebration

Al-Siyasah also looked back on the invasion with bitterness.

"The 10th anniversary won't be an occasion for happiness or of hope for Gulf and Arab stability and security, with or without the exit of Saddam Hussein from Arab political history," the paper said in a front page editorial.

"On the occasion of the anniversary, we and the Arabs should not forget that Arab national security has many enemies in the presence of Saddam in charge of affairs in Baghdad."

'Nightmare'

But Kuwaiti wrath was not only directed towards its northern neighbour.

Desert Shield - mirage?

One writer in Al-Watan had harsh words for the cost of keeping US forces in the country.

"What we are paying is huge and exorbitant," Abdallah Khalifah al-Shayji said.

He said the country had spent billions of dollars buying an "insurance policy" in the form of American protection and arms.

"But we have woken up... to discover that the policy will end in a year's time," he said.

"We have been unable to see that Iraq is the source of danger, that Desert Shield was a mirage, that Gulf unity is a dream... and that Saddam's nightmares are a bitter reality."

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.