Saddam Hussein declared that Iraq is free of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and invited any country to see for itself that the United States has been lying about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction as a pretext to wage war.
The Iraqi president – in a letter read to the United Nations on Thursday – accused US President George Bush of portraying the weapons issue as the greatest danger to the future of the world and insinuating that Iraq was linked to the September 11 attacks to incite Americans ”to accept the US administration’s schemes of aggression as a fait accompli.”
Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri read excerpts of Saddam’s letter – his first comments since Monday’s announcement that Iraq will allow UN inspectors to return – during the annual ministerial meeting of the 190-member General Assembly.
Delegates applauded loudly after the speech, which Sabri unusually delivered in English rather than Arabic.
Saddam’s message was delivered a week after Bush challenged the United Nations to adopt a resolution threatening force unless Iraq complies with resolutions it has flouted for 12 years. Under pressure from a growing number of countries, including its close ally Russia and Arab nations, Sabri announced that inspectors could return without conditions after nearly four years.
”I hereby declare before you that Iraq is clear of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons,” Saddam said.
Saddam invited any nations worried about US allegations that Iraq is producing weapons of mass destruction to send scientific experts and politicians to visit any installations, ”particularly those about which the American officials have been fabricating false stories, alleging that they contain prohibited materials or activities.”
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, reacting within minutes, said Iraq ”engaged in additional deceptions” and ”showed no willingness to change attitude or behavior”.
”The speech is an attempt to lure the world down the same dead-end road that the world has traveled before and, in that, it represents a disappointing failure by Iraq,” Fleischer said.
Hans Blix, the UN chief weapons inspector, is to hold talks with Iraqi officials on September 30 in Vienna, Austria.
If all goes well at the talks, he could have an advance team on the ground by October 15, and some early inspections could be conducted soon afterward, Blix told reporters after briefing the Security Council on Thursday.
”We will select some sites that we think are interesting to go to in the early phases,” he said.
In Washington, Bush lashed out Thursday at the notion that Iraq is in talks with the United Nations about resuming inspections: ”There are no negotiations to be held with Iraq. … I don’t trust Iraq and neither should the free world.”
The United States and Britain were working on a toughly worded resolution that would sanction the use of force if Iraq doesn’t fully cooperate with the inspectors.
The close allies also were sounding out the three other veto-wielding Security Council members, Russia, China and France, council diplomats said. Their support is crucial for adoption of a new resolution, but so far none has supported the idea of authorising military action.
The deep divide between Russia and the United States was underlined Thursday in comments by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov on his arrival at the Pentagon to meet with his US counterpart, Donald Rumsfeld.
Ivanov said he believes UN weapons inspectors will succeed in settling the question of whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.
”Being experienced in that sort of business – both Americans and Russians – I think we can easily establish (whether) there exist or not weapons of mass destruction technology,” Ivanov said.
Rumsfeld has said repeatedly that inspections cannot be 100% reliable because Iraq has a long history of deceiving inspectors.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said on Thursday a new resolution was not essential but ”could be useful,” but he reaffirmed France’s opposition to any resolution that would approve military action without first giving the inspectors time to do their work.
”There is a temptation in the United States toward a regime change at any costs,” de Villepin told Europe-1 radio. ”That is not the French position, nor is it the position of a majority of the international community.”
China’s UN Ambassador Wang Yingfan said the inspectors should return under a December 1999 Security Council resolution, which diplomats note was drafted by the United States.
”What we are trying to do is get inspectors back as soon as possible, and the Security Council should follow closely … whether they could have unrestricted, unconditional access to the areas, the records, everything,” he said.
In his letter to the United Nations, Saddam accused Bush of trying to link ”distortions” about Iraqi nuclear, chemical and biological threats to the tragedy of September 11.
The Iraqi president charged that ”the American propaganda machine, along with official statements of lies, distortion and falsehood” was being used for ”inciting the American public against Iraq.”
He charged that the United States was working in concert with Israel and that an important US motive was access to oil.
”The US administration wants to destroy Iraq in order to control the Middle East oil and consequently control the politics as well as the oil and economic policies of the whole world,” Saddam said.
He also charged that the United States was fomenting problems with Iraq to prevent the Security Council from lifting economic sanctions and to keep the Middle East from becoming a nuclear-free zone as called for in council resolutions.
The United States, he said, does not want to embarrass Israel – which he referred to as ”the Zionist entity” – or deprive it of the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons it possesses. – Sapa-AP