March 11, 2002
Iraq, vowing to thwart any US attack, insisted today it would not allow UN arms inspectors back into the country, following talks on the matter with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. "Iraq's positions, barring the return of the spy teams, are firm and will not change," Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan said, quoted by the official INA news agency.
Ramadan, who yesterday had implicitly ruled out the inspectors' return, said Iraq's experience with the UN Security Council proved "the futility of the return of the spy teams, who spied on Iraq for eight years".
Iraq, under the leadership of President Saddam Hussein, was "now stronger and more determined than ever to stand up to any US aggression", Ramadan also told an Egyptian delegation taking part in an Arab conference being held in Baghdad in solidarity with Iraq and the Palestinians. "Iraq is capable of repelling and thwarting any American-Zionist plot targeting its national sovereignty," he said.
Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri on Thursday held what he described as "constructive" talks with Annan on the possible return of the inspectors, who have been barred from Iraq since pulling out in December 1998 before a US-British bombing blitz.
The talks, the first high-level encounter between the two sides in a year, are due to resume in mid-April.
The United States has dropped broad hints that it might take military action against Iraq and try to overthrow the Baghdad regime unless it allows arms inspectors back into the country to check that it no longer has weapons of mass destruction.
Ramadan told the opening session of the conference of "Arab popular forces" yesterday that international monitoring of Iraq's weapons programs was only acceptable if applied to all countries of the region, including Israel. "As for talk of the return of UN inspectors, the search for and dismantling of Iraq's (prohibited) weapons was completed by the (now defunct UN) Special Commission and the spy teams affiliated to it," he said, referring to the inspectors who operated in Iraq from the end of the 1991 Gulf War until 1998. Their return would be aimed at "spying (on Iraq) and contriving crises" that would lead to "fresh US and British attacks" on the country, Ramadan added.
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