Iraq is expected to respond within the next few days to the UN Security Council resolution requiring it to disarm or face serious consequences, the official Iraqi News Agency said on Saturday.
In a one-sentence report, INA said that despite the resolution’s being ”bad and unjust,” the Iraqi leadership ”will study quietly this resolution and will issue the proper response in the next few
days.”
The report quoted an unidentified ”official source.”
However vague, the report was the first signal of when Iraq may issue its response.
The decision is expected to be taken by a joint meeting of the Revolutionary Command Council and the Regional Command of the ruling Baath party. Such meetings are chaired by President Saddam Hussein.
In Cairo, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri confirmed his government was going to take its time to respond to the resolution that was passed unanimously by the Security Council on Friday evening Middle East time.
”Baghdad will study the resolution and we will take a decision later,” Sabri told reporters after talks with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher on Saturday.
In Baghdad on Saturday, Iraqi state-controlled newspapers reported the Security Council vote, but they gave no idea of whether the government would comply with the council’s demands.
”We were not surprised by the resolution, but we are sorry about what the United Nations has become,” the newspaper Babil said on Saturday in an editorial. Babil, which is owned by the son of President Saddam Hussein, was the only Iraqi paper to comment on
the resolution that was passed unanimously by the Security Council on Friday evening Iraqi time.
”The new resolution is new in number, but old in details which were rejected by Iraq in the past. This time the American administration succeeded in making the United Nations its tool to influence policy,” Babil said.
The front-page editorial said it expected Washington to apply pressure to the UN weapons inspectors, who are scheduled to arrive in Iraq beginning Nov. 18, ”to do things not included in their mandate to provoke Iraq.”
The paper said Iraq will not give America a chance
”to use such opportunity.” – Sapa-AP