HUSSEIN ONN

born Feb. 12, 1922, Johore Bharu, Malaya died May 28, 1990, Daly City, Calif., U.S. in full Datuk Hussein Bin Onn Malaysian politician and prime minister (197681) of a multiracial coalition government. During World War II Hussein fought with the Indian army and with the British forces that in 1945 freed Malaya from Japanese occupation. In 1946 he joined his politician father Onn Bin Jaafar in forming the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) to further Malay interests in the struggle for independence, but he quit when his father's multiracial policies were rejected by the party. Hussein studied at Lincoln's Inn in London, and, after he was called to the bar (1960), he returned to Malaysia to practice law. He rejoined UMNO (1968), was elected to Parliament (1969), and was appointed education minister (1970) and deputy prime minister (1973). As prime minister, beginning in 1976, Hussein presided over a generally peaceful coalition with Chinese and Indian parties, despite ongoing racial tensions and trouble with communist insurgents. He also strongly opposed the immigration of Vietnamese refugees to Malaysia, strengthened Malaysia's role in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and worked to bring Brunei into ASEAN. When heart problems forced him to resign in 1981 he named Datuk Seri Mahathir bin Mohamad as his successor, but in 1988 he supported a rival group's challenge to Mahathir. King Hussein Gamma Hussein, Saddam born April 28, 1937, Tikrit, Iraq also spelled Saddam Husayn, in full Saddam Hussein At-Tikriti president of Iraq from 1979, whose rule was marked by costly and unsuccessful wars against neighbouring countries. Hussein was born into a peasant family in northern Iraq, and he joined the Ba'th Socialist Party in 1957. In 1959 he participated in an unsuccessful attempt by Ba'thists to assassinate the Iraqi prime minister, 'Abd al-Karim Qasim, and, wounded, escaped to Syria and then Egypt. He attended Cairo Law School (196263) and continued his studies at Baghdad Law College after the Ba'thists took power in Iraq in 1963. When the Ba'thists were overthrown that same year, Hussein spent several years in prison in Iraq. He escaped, becoming a leader of the Ba'th party, and was instrumental in the coup that brought the party back to power in 1968. Hussein effectively held power in Iraq along with the head of state, President Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, and in 1972 he directed the nationalization of Iraq's oil industry. Hussein began to assert open control of the government in 1979, becoming president upon Bakr's resignation. He then became chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council and prime minister, among other positions. He used an extensive secret-police establishment to suppress any internal opposition to his rule, and he made himself the object of an extensive personality cult among the Iraqi public. His goals as president were to supplant Egypt as leader of the Arab world, to achieve hegemony over the Persian Gulf, and to use oil revenues to raise the country's standard of living. Hussein launched an invasion of Iran's oil fields in September 1980, but the campaign bogged down in a war of attrition. The cost of the war and the interruption of Iraq's oil exports caused Hussein to scale down his ambitious programs for economic development. The Iran-Iraq War dragged on in a stalemate until 1988, when both countries accepted a cease-fire that ended the fighting. Despite the large foreign debt with which Iraq found itself saddled by war's end, Hussein continued to build up his armed forces. In August 1990 the Iraqi army overran neighbouring Kuwait in a surprise attack. Hussein apparently intended to use that nation's vast oil revenues to bolster Iraq's economy, but his occupation of Kuwait quickly triggered a worldwide trade embargo against Iraq. Hussein ignored appeals to withdraw his forces from Kuwait, despite the buildup of a large U.S.-led military force in Saudi Arabia and the passage of United Nations resolutions condemning the occupation and authorizing the use of force to end it. In a six-week-long war that began on January 16, 1991, the military coalition drove Iraq's armies out of Kuwait. Iraq's crushing defeat triggered internal rebellions by both Shi'ites and Kurds, but Hussein suppressed their uprisings, causing thousands to flee to refugee camps along the country's northern border. As part of the cease-fire agreement with the UN, Iraq was prohibited from producing chemical and nuclear weapons. Numerous sanctions were leveled on the country pending compliance, causing severe food and medicine shortages and further weakening the economy. Hussein's continued refusal to cooperate with UN arms inspectors led to a four-day air strike by the United States and Great Britain in late 1998. Both countries announced that they would support efforts of the Iraqi opposition to unseat Hussein.