Taisir Khaled, member of the Executive Committee of the PLO and member of the Political Bureau of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, stated that the execution of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein this past December 31 represents a tragic and shocking event to the world public in general.

Khaled added that the execution of the Iraqi president, a prisoner of war, was carried out as an act of vengeance by the US government within a legal framework that will not absolve it from the daily crimes that it is committing —permeated with false excuses— against the Iraqi people.

United States, with its acts of aggression and the manipulation of its arguments, hides its hegemonic objectives aimed at the Arab people to control their wealth and to direct them based on the American government’s interests and those of Israel .

Khaled called upon the Iraqi people —with all their ethnic groups, religious sects and different political forces— to look to the future, to overcome their differences and to unite the entire national potential to free Iraq from the invaders. Likewise he urged them to maintain their territorial unity and sovereignty, and to reclaim their position defending the unity of the Arab nation and supporting the struggle of the Palestinian people against occupation and for independence.