Iraq celebrates Saddam birthday

The Revolutionary Command Council presents its gift

By Caroline Hawley BBC correspondent in Baghdad

After several days of increasing activity, Saddam Hussein's 65th birthday party celebrations are now in full swing.

The main focus is in his home town, Tikrit, where a giant pink birthday cake has been ceremonially cut.

We will prove to the West that neither America nor the whole world can change our President because he represents the Iraqi will

Student Abdullah Bashir

Saddam Hussein does not attend the celebrations, but a senior Baath party official accepted a golden statue of the 12th century Muslim hero Saladdin on his behalf.

The ruling Baath party daily Ath-Thawra said his birthday was "the day of a new act of allegiance...by which the people defy the enemies of Iraq and the Arab nation".

Iraq's Youth Television station, run by Saddam Hussein's son, Uday, has changed its name to Birthday Television for the occasion.

Celebrations

"The celebrations will be massive," says party loyalist and university student, Abdullah Bashir.

Iraq's National Theatre stages Saddam's novel

"We will prove to the West that neither America nor the whole world can change our president because he represents the Iraqi will."

In honour of the big birthday, a play based on a novel which Saddam Hussein wrote, Zabiba and the King, has opened in Baghdad to rapturous reviews.

Earlier in the week, more than 500 Iraqi couples were married at a mass wedding in Saddam Hussein's honour.

At Baghdad University, booklets of his speeches in several languages are being handed out to students.

They include his address on the anniversary of the "Mother of All Battles" against a US-led coalition in 1991 and a speech delivered in the following year entitled: "May Iraq's enemies be crushed and evil be their harvest".

Desire for change

New portraits have also been specially painted for the occasion.

"It's a chance to show our love of the president," said 50-year old Muhammad Karim, as he put the final touches to a massive canvas of a grinning Saddam Hussein.

More than 500 couples were married in a mass ceremony

But after 23 years of Saddam Hussein's rule, one of the very few people in Baghdad who is willing to raise an independent voice told BBC News Online that, while Iraqis do not want an American-imposed regime in Baghdad, they do want change.

"Iraqis would like the current regime to be more open, more tolerant of the opposition, and criticism," said Wamidh Nadhmi, who teaches political science at Baghdad University, and who knew Saddam Hussein in Cairo as a student.

"People should be allowed to express their opinions, we don't need unanimous agreement on every single point," he said.

"But I think people would be very doubtful about the Americans forcibly changing the regime."

Saddam Hussein has controlled Iraq since 1968, and been president since 1979.