US fighter jets attacked two Iraqi missile sites in the northern no-fly zone yesterday in the latest military clash with Baghdad, the Pentagon said.
No damage or casualties were reported on the US side, and the Pentagon said all the US planes had returned safely to base in Incirlik, Turkey.
Lieut-Col Steve Campbell, a US Defence Department spokesman, said both incidents had occurred at about 10.45 a.m. local time (7.45 a.m. Irish time) near Mosul in northern Iraq.
"In both cases, coalition aircraft were illuminated by Iraqi air defence missile systems," Col Campbell said.
In one case, two US F-15 warplanes responded by dropping two precision-guided bombs on an Iraqi missile launch site. And in the second incident an F-16 jet fired a High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile at another site. He said it was not yet clear whether the US had hit the Iraqi targets.
David Hirst reports from Beirut:
With Iraq escalating its diplomatic and propaganda warfare on almost all fronts, and leading Arab governments for the first time openly calling for President Saddam's removal from power, tension in the region is approaching levels not seen since the eve of the Gulf War.
There is widespread uncertainty in the Arab world about President Saddam's motives, some saying that he is driven by a frustration or desperation that could take an incalculable turn, some saying that it is all part of his steadily unfolding plan to end UN sanctions and break out of his regional and international isolation. Whatever the explanation, he is now directing his threats towards those targets which he always tends to focus on when the stakes mount - Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
In the most tangible sign that he is being taken seriously, Kuwait said yesterday that it had put part of its military on full, combat-ready alert in response to Iraqi "threats" to Gulf states.
For its part, Iraq yesterday flatly rejected what, on the face of it, looked like a conciliatory gesture against the general backdrop of growing Gulf hostility. This was a Saudi proposal, leaked to the media over the weekend, for the adoption of UN Security Council resolutions permitting Iraq to import humanitarian goods, from food to medicine and educational tools. The object, Saudi Arabia said, was one to which many Arab states are now wedded: easing the suffering of the Iraqi people.
Denouncing Saudi Arabia as a party to US-British "aggression", since 1990 till last month, Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Tariq Aziz, said "it cannot be expected to come up with sincere and positive proposals in Iraq's favour".
What most alarms Mr Saddam, many Arab commentators say, is the growing evidence that key Arab regimes which formerly disapproved of any US notions of engineering his downfall have now dropped their reservations. Mr Saddam's own calls for their overthrow have clearly contributed to that.
In his escalating defiance, first directed against the US and Britain, UNSCOM and the "no-fly zones", Mr Saddam last week delivered his most violent denunciation of Arab leaders since the Gulf War. With Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in mind, he said that "the aircraft of the aggression took off and its missiles were, and are being, launched . . . from the water, airspace and the land of the gulf."
After a crescendo of indignation in Gulf newspapers, the Saudi Press Agency on Sunday delivered what, for a mouthpiece of official policy renowned for its great caution, was a portentous verdict: "the tyrant of Baghdad ", it said, "called on Arabs to revolt. The truth is that the Iraqi people are the ones who deserve and need to revolt."
After a similar press campaign in Cairo, Egypt has also all but officially echoed this unprecedented appeal. The Egyptian Foreign Minister, Mr Amr Moussa, said yesterday that Mr Saddam is "shaming the entire Arab region through his politics".
It has always been through threats to the Gulf, Arab analysts say, that Mr Saddam has been best able to demonstrate the trouble-making capacity to which, despairing of restraint, he periodically reverts in an attempt to get his way. However unrealistic it might seem, he is only being consistent with himself in once again reviving the old Iraqi claim to Kuwait.
In 1994, the Iraqi parliament solemnly renounced it, but over the weekend it held an emergency session in which deputy after deputy urged the government to withdraw Iraqi recognition of Kuwait, and to "punish" Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as "hostile" states.
The chief UN weapons inspector, Mr Richard Butler, said yesterday he was suspending flights by US U-2 spy planes over Iraq while the UN Security Council debates the future of the operation to control Iraq's arsenal. He also told a Washington conference on weapons non-proliferation sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, that UNSCOM could be "modernised" in the future and "be a bit different than what we see today".