By IPS Correspondents
ABU DHABI, May 12 2003 (IPS)

A United Arab Emirates (UAE) newspaper yesterday said that the return of emigrant and exiled Iraqis to their homes is an indication that the days of servility, subjugation and deprivation, which were practiced by the former Iraqi regime, have ended for ever.

Commenting editorially on the issue, the Abu Dhabi-based ‘Al Ittihad’ said: – Now the time has come for all emigrant and exiled Iraqis to go back home, live peacefully in their homeland and among their relatives in a secure atmosphere free from any fear and subjugation.

ôThe collapsed regime had carried out displacements and expulsion policies in a systematic manner and put a large number of Iraqis in jails till last April 9, the day all statues were broken into pieces and enlarged photographs were also torn.

ôNow Iraq is calling all its citizens, who were compelled to live abroad, to return home to take a leading part in the rebuilding process of their beloved country and help in maintaining its law and order.

ôThe more the Iraqi prominent personalities, politicians, thinkers and scholars hurry to return home, the more the coalition forces will also hasten to go back to their homes, a fact which would enable the Iraqis to reconstruct their country and help put Iraq’s economy back on its feet without any foreign guardianship or sponsorship, through which the foreign troops could try to support this party or that, a fact which would lead to a new conflict, which would double the distress of the Iraqi people," the paper concluded.

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