The final green signal to Iraq’s plans to invade Kuwait seems to have been given by the US ambassador in Baghdad, April Glaspie, who met Saddam Hussein on 25 July, a week before the invasion. In response to Saddam’s query relating to the US position on Iraq’s territorial claims on Kuwait, Glaspie responded thus: We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait. I was in the American embassy in Kuwait in the late 1960s. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue [of borders], and the issue is not
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