Iraq again opened the door this weekend to a possible return of UN arms inspectors, but kept up its anti-US rhetoric in riposte to Washington’s determination to oust President Saddam Hussein.
The official media returned on Saturday to the attack over allegations that Baghdad has developed prohibited weapons.
”The US lies about Iraq are lame because they are not based on any reasonable logic,” Al-Jumhuriya said.
”No one wants to hear them and the numbers supporting them has fallen even in the United States and Britain.”
The daily said Iraq’s invitations to the chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix and members of the US Congress to visit Baghdad for disarmament talks ”have confirmed the correctness of Iraq’s position.”
Al-Iraq dismissed the accusation about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction as ”unjust fabrication by the evil American administration which is trying to build a new coalition to give legitimacy to its threats against Iraq.
The influential Babel put the spotlight on the ”scatter-brained” US President George Bush and added a menacing tone.
”He believes that others can be the targets of his sophisticated weapons, but has he forgotten that his own country is a frail target which can be easily reached and with lesser means, as the September 11 attacks showed?” asked Babel, run by President Saddam Hussein’s elder son Uday.
Iraq on Friday renewed a proposal to continue discussions with the United Nations about the return of arms inspectors to verify the US charges.
Foreign Minister Naji Sabri in a 10-page letter to UN chief Kofi Annan called for new ”technical discussions”.
The letter came in response to one from Annan earlier this month asking Sabri to confirm whether Iraq was prepared to obey the will of the Security Council, notably orders to disarm following the 1991 Gulf War.
”We are renewing this offer for the holding of technical discussions to review what was achieved in the last phase (of weapons inspections) and discuss how to tackle issues which were still not settled when the inspectors left Iraq of their own accord in 1998,” Sabri said.
”The technical delegation from the United Nations will be able to raise all matters it deems necessary to advance the discussions and establish the groundwork for the next phase of monitoring and inspection.”
Sabri said the delegation ”could also examine the practical preparations with a view to a reestablishment of the surveillance system in the future and prepare the ground for the simultaneous application of all the pertinent Security Council resolutions.”
The United Nations was not expected to react to Sabri’s request before next week.
In London, the Financial Times said on Saturday that new stress on diplomatic activity suggested the United States recognised the need to intensify efforts to persuade other countries and influential US lawmakers of its case for ousting Saddam.
It quoted a senior administration official as saying the United States was willing to push for weapons inspectors to go back into Iraq, although Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggested the contrary last week.
The official told the daily that such a tactic would be a way of demonstrating that Saddam was a barrier to eliminating weapons of destruction and therefore must be toppled.
”You press to have the inspectors go back in with unimpeded access until people appreciate … that he (Saddam) is never going to let that happen.”
In the United States, Bush had to fight to downplay reservations from key Republican Party figures about his strategy to oust the Iraqi strongman.
”We’ll continue to consult … People should be allowed to express their opinion. But America needs to know I’ll be making up my mind based upon the latest intelligence and how best to protect our own country plus our friends and allies,” Bush said.
Several Republican members of Congress, along with former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, have voiced reservations about a US attack on Iraq and asked Bush to clarify his intentions.
They questioned how much of a threat the Iraqi arms programme really was. Was there proof of a link between Baghdad and the September 11 terrorists? Would such a move destabilise the Middle East? Was the US ready to rebuild a ”post-Saddam” Iraq? Which allies were prepared to give their support? And was public opinion ready to accept US casualties?
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel also said the CIA had ”absolutely no evidence” that Iraq possessed or would soon possess nuclear weapons.
And despite all the sabre-rattling and US press expectation of war soon, US military officials said on Friday that the Pentagon had so far made no overt moves to build up forces in the Gulf for a major offensive. – Sapa-AFP