Macau casino kingpin says NKorea offering Saddam Hussein asylum
A Macau casino mogul has conveyed an offer of asylum from North Korea to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Stanley Ho Hung-sun told the Sunday Morning Post that high-level North Korean officials have offered Saddam and his family sanctuary on a mountain in the isolated Stalinist state.
"We have to take any chance to have peace, especially if it comes in the shape of good news from the East," the paper quoted Ho as saying.
"They told me there really was a chance to prevent a war, and said that Saddam Hussein could step down two days before the US and Britain started to bomb and he could call democratic elections."
Ho had no further details of the North Korean offer and said he was unaware whether it had been formally conveyed to Baghdad, where UN weapons inspectors are combing presidential palaces and other official sites to find Iraq's alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.
No reason was given as to why Ho, who in 1999 opened a casino next to communist party headquarters in Pyongyang, was chosen as the conduit for the North Korean message.
The United Arab Emirates on Saturday at an Arab League summit in Egypt called for Saddam to step down to prevent a US-led war from devastating the region.
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Kim offers asylum to Saddam: report
HONG 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".
Chinese billionaires like Ho do not always possess political acumen 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".
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, ensuring that there was no American interference in a future Iraqi democratic state. Anyone who did accept money from the US would be shot"--presumably by a Saddam who had not entirely stepped down prior to the election.
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."
The news story seems to be straight out of Ripley's "Believe It Or Not" 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.