Iraq Keeps Asking For Trouble

CBS News has learned, Saddam Hussein continued his violations of the southern no-fly zone Saturday by sending planes further south than ever before --almost to the Kuwaiti border.

No U.S. planes were patrolling the no-fly zone Saturday and Saddam apparently took advantage of the fact to pull off the most flagrant violation of the no-fly zone since it was created.

Twice this week, American planes fired on Iraqi missile sites after they targeted allied warplanes.

In another development, diplomats say Baghdad will no longer issue visas for Americans or Britons working for the U-N humanitarian program in Iraq.

John Mills, the U.N. spokesman for the oil-for-food program in New York, would not say whether the program's American and British workers were being forced to leave.

The development could set the stage for a new confrontation between Iraq and the two Western powers that launched airstrikes against it last month.

Some 120 relief workers were evacuated during the bombardment to Amman, the capital of neighboring Jordan, but all returned five days later.

U.N. weapons inspectors, who also were withdrawn just before the bombings, have not been allowed to return by Iraq.

The airstrikes were aimed at punishing Iraq for its refusal to cooperate with the inspectors, who are responsible for certifying that the country has dismantled its weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq has repeatedly complained that the U.N. inspection teams are dominated by Americans and Britons. It accuses them of spying and had ordered them out briefly in November 1997.

Somerwill declined to say how many Britons or Americans work for the aid agencies in Iraq or whether their expulsion will hamper relief operations there.

But the diplomats said there were at most a dozen American and British citizens among the 420 U.N. humanitarian workers in Iraq.

They said Iraq told the U.N. officials that it cannot guarantee the safety of Britons and the Americans in the aftermath of the airstrikes.

Until the U.N. inspectors certify that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction, the U.N. Security Council will not lift the economic sanctions it imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The Security Council is expected on Monday to have consultations on Iraq. The session is expected to include discussions on its oil-for-food program.

Egypt and Iraq, meanwhile, escalated a verbal spat that began last week after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak blamed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for Iraq's woes.

The Babil newspaper, owned by Saddam's son Odai, Saurday published a cartoon showing Mubarak traipsing in a belly dancer's costume while a beaming President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright clap to encourage him.

Also Saturday, the official Al-Akhbar Al-Yom newspaper of Egypt published on the front page a colored drawing of Saddam sitting on a pyramid of skulls. Inside was a scathing two-page editorial on Saddam's rule.