The level of Iraqi anger towards Australia reached a new level here
yesterday, when Dr A.K. Al-Hashimi, an adviser and confidant to
the regime of Saddam Hussein, warned of the hatred with which
Iraqis would kill Australians or the troops of any other country that
fell in with a United States attack.

"Any British or Australian fighters who come here will go home in a
plastic bag or on a stretcher," he said.

"They don't understand the Muslim mentality; God help those
soldiers when they face our anger."

The bitterness over Australia's preparedness to join a US war on
Baghdad now seems to have destroyed any hope of getting
Australia's wheat trade, worth $890 million a year, back to the
secure footing of a favoured trading-partner relationship.

An emergency dash to Baghdad by the Australian Wheat Board
earlier this month extracted an Iraqi agreement to resume grain deliveries. But this
depended on Canberra pushing for a diplomatic solution to the Iraq-US standoff as
Washington tries to assemble a combat coalition.

And soon after the board mission there was a lull in the Canberra rhetoric that initially had
provoked Iraq's trade shots across Australia's bow.

But the Defence Minister, Robert Hill, this week seemed to take the rhetoric back to the
same tenor that first offended Baghdad in July. He said of a renewed warning by
Washington that Iraq was on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons that it would use:
"Who would suggest that it is reasonable or rational to wait until the nuclear weapons have
been fully developed?"

Dr Al-Hashimi, a former Iraqi ambassador to France, was one of several advisers to
Saddam and his ministers who expressed their disappointment with Australia this week.

He said: "With this attitude of going all the way with the USA, Australia should forget about
the Iraqi market now and for a long time to come. This is not a threat; it is commonsense.

"As Iraqis we have the right to say: 'Hell, why should we give you business when you are
working against us? Go see if you can sell your wheat to the US.' You mean that you want
us to do business with you at the same time as you would slaughter us?"

Hammam al Shamaa, a senior economic adviser to the Iraqi Government, said that Iraqis
had difficulty understanding the role of the Australian and British governments because of
the gap between their rhetoric and public opinion on war against Iraq. "Iraq considers this
stand by the Australia Government to be very strange indeed because, in the same way
that we do not believe the British people are behind their Prime Minister's aggression
towards us, we do not believe that the Australian people are against us.

"Our decision on Australian wheat was designed to inform Australians of a mistake by their
government. They need to know that we are ready to eat barley instead of Australian wheat
if Australia is the only country from which we can import wheat."

Warning that ultimately Iraq was likely to sever all relations with Australia, Dr al Shamaa
said: "It would be different if Australia's position was in harmony with the rest of the world,
but it is one of only four countries against us - the US, Britain, Israel and Australia. Iraq had
a right to impose sanctions too, you know."

Asked about Australia's long-term trade relationship with Iraq, the economist said there
was potential for a significant relationship based on more than just wheat, "but if the
Australian Government persists with this aggression against us it will be doing great harm
to that relationship".

Dr Qais Al-Nouri, an academic who is close to the Government, was indignant.

"I'm amazed by this. Iraq is not a threat to Australia. What is this all about? Is it a dependent
attitude by Australia?

"It seems so irrational that Australia wants to escalate this crisis, even at the expense of
your political and strategic interests. You need to know that it is a tragic mistake, because
US policy is not acceptable to us or to most countries in the world.

"So blindly boosting US policy will not serve Australia. Do you expect that we would have
any commercial relationship with a country that is hostile to us? Logic says that any trade
between our countries is at risk. How can we be positive towards people who want to
suffocate us?"

Saad Jawad, a professor of politics at the University of Baghdad and an adviser on foreign
affairs, said Australia risked the same fate as Japan, which had been prominent among
Iraq's trading partners in the past, but had been punished with the loss of most of its
contracts because of what Baghdad saw as the anti-Iraqi bent of its diplomatic activity at
the UN.