Iraq to Host Arab Meeting to Oppose U.S. Attack
The two-day meeting will be attended by more than 100 MPs from 18 Arab states to try to take a "unified stance against the American threats of aggression," Deputy Speaker of Iraq's Parliament Hamed Rasheed al-Rawi told Reuters.
Kuwait, which Iraqi troops invaded in 1990 only to be driven out the following year by a U.S.-led multinational force in the Persian Gulf War, would not be represented.
Arrangements for the meeting came amid an Iraqi diplomatic offensive to rally support for Baghdad, and some war-like rhetoric from Washington.
U.S. President George W. Bush's administration says it wants "regime change" in Baghdad -- a euphemism for the military overthrow of President Saddam Hussein -- and accuses Iraq of trying to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Saadoun Hammadi, speaker of Iraq's Parliament, said Baghdad was not scared by American threats.
"We will assure our brotherly Arab parliamentarians that such threats won't scare anyone and our people will stand firm against any reckless attempt to encroach upon our country's sovereignty and stability," he told Iraqi television.
Speakers of the Syrian, Yemeni, Algerian and Qatari parliaments were expected to arrive in Baghdad on Monday for the meeting. Jordan and Egypt were sending deputy speakers.
"The parliamentarians will express once again their solidarity with Iraq against the American threats," head of the Arab Parliamentary Union, Norideen Bushakuh, said in a statement published on Monday.
As part of Iraq's preparations for any U.S. military attack, the Baghdad press said new groups of Iraqi volunteers joined military training camps on Monday set up around the country.
Iraq says that around seven million Iraqis -- out of a population of 23 million -- had received military training over the last year.
In its meeting in the United Arab Emirates last year, the Arab Parliamentary Union called for an end to 12-year-old UN trade sanctions imposed on Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait.