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Kim offers asylum to Saddam: Times of India Report
Via DrudgeHONG KONG: North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has offered political asylum to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, according to a front page story in Sunday's South China Morning Post. The bizarre tale appears to be the kind of news story that newspapers like to publish on April Fool's Day, except for one thing: it has a credible source. He is Stanley Ho Hung-sun, the wealthy magnate who runs Macau's gambling casinos, through whom "high-level North Korean officials have offered the Iraqi dictator and his family 11th hour sanctuary in a mountain in North Korea". In a mountain? That's like the asylum we offered Bin Laden in Tora Bora
Right, that's how they become rich in a communist country, by being political naifs but it is usually difficult to take them for a ride. Ho told the SCMP that senior level North Korean officials "told me that there really was a chance to prevent a war and (they) said that Saddam Hussein could step down two days before the US and Britain started to bomb Iraq and he (Saddam) could call democratic elections". Heh heh there's so much there to deride: when is two days before the bombing starts? Who in Iraq knows what a democratic election even looks like? The Baath party will welcome the chance to have a Ho goes on to say that "one of the conditions of those elections would be that none of the candidates would be allowed funding from the US, no soft money - McCain has followers here ensuring that there was no American interference in a future Iraqi democratic state. Anyone who did accept money from the US would be shot" âpresumably by a Saddam who had not entirely stepped down prior to the election. ???? Where did this come from â I thought Saddam would be in a mountain in NK Ho extolled this initiative by saying that "it could be (Saddam Hussein's) trump card. North Korea is willing to give Saddam and his family a mountain in North Korea." It's not some fixer-upper mountain, it's in reaalllly good shape. You'll like it The news story seems to be straight out of Ripley's âBelieve It Or Notâ except for one thing: Ho does have North Korean connections. The SCMP notes that in 1999 Stanley invested US$30 million in the North when he opened a Casino Pyongyang next to the Korean Workers Party headquarters. Posted by: Frank G 2003-03-02 |
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