Iraq Reaffirms Readiness to Cooperate with UN Arms Inspectors

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, October 14, 2002

Iraq Reaffirms Readiness to Cooperate with UN Arms Inspectors

Iraq's head of parliament on Sunday reiterated his country's readiness to receive the United Nations arms inspectors and pledged "serious" cooperation with the international mission.

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Iraq's head of parliament on Sunday reiterated his country's readiness to receive the United Nations arms inspectors and pledged "serious" cooperation with the international mission.

Saadoun Hamadi, speaker of the National Assembly, made the remarks during his meeting with a visiting Japanese parliamentary delegation in Baghdad, the official Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported.

Iraq's cooperation with the United Nations will "drop the pretexts presented by the United States that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction," Hamadi told the Japanese delegation.

Hamadi's reconciling remarks came as the United States is explicitly determined to disarm Iraq, possibly by force.

US President George W. Bush has accused Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of posing a "grave threat" to the world by secretly pursuing weapons of mass destruction and supporting international terrorists.

However, Hamadi once again dismissed the allegation, saying the United States "tries to distort the facts and mislead the media by giving unreal pictures about Iraq and its leadership," INA said.

Iraq has been under sweeping UN sanctions since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the embargo will not be lifted until the United Nations certifies that Iraq has eliminated all of its weapons of mass destruction and means of launching them.

Continuous spats about alleged espionage activities between Iraqand the UN arms inspectors, who were commissioned to verify Iraq's elimination of its weapons of mass destruction, eventually led to the brief air war against Baghdad from December 17-19, 1998. The arms inspectors withdrew from Iraq shortly before the air war.

In an official letter addressed to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Sept. 16, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said his government is ready to accept the unconditional return of the UN weapon inspectors.

But the United States and its closest ally Britain have been engaged in a joint diplomatic offensive to push through a tough-worded new UN Security Council resolution on Iraq's disarmament.

The proposed UN resolution will reportedly set a seven-day deadline for Iraq to accept all its demands and open all suspected sites, including the President's palaces, to international weapons inspectors.

The tough demands are coupled with a warning that "all necessarymeans," including the use of force, would be applied against Iraq if it fails to come into line.

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