The United States is applying double standards, banning Iraq and other Arab countries from acquiring weapons of mass destruction while allowing Israel to possess them, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef has said.
”Israel, which threatens the security of the region and the world, owns and has those weapons,” Nayef told reporters on Wednesday, adding the kingdom was against any country possessing weapons of mass destruction.
According to foreign media reports Israel has had nuclear weapons for decades. Israeli leaders refuse to comment directly, saying only that Israel will not introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East.
US President George Bush, accusing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and harboring terrorists, has said he wants a ”regime change” in Baghdad. He has not said whether he will go to war to achieve his aim.
The Saudi interior minister spoke a day after visiting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak met with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah for talks on the U.S.-Iraqi confrontation — which Arab leaders fear could lead to a war that will plunge the entire region into chaos — and escalating Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Saudi Arabia and Egypt have pressed Iraq to allow in UN weapons inspectors to try to defuse the crisis.
On September 16, Iraq sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan agreeing to accept inspectors with no conditions. But the United States has expressed skepticism Iraq will live up to that promise.
This month the pro-government Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, quoted Maher as saying that while Egypt was still opposed to an attack on Iraq, if the United Nations endorsed such a move, Egypt would go along.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal has said the kingdom would be ”obliged to follow through” if the United States needed bases in the kingdom to attack Iraq under UN authority. – Sapa-AP