Iraq blamed the United States for the breakdown in its talks with the United Nations on the return of UN weapons inspectors to Baghdad, accusing it of looking to escalate the issue as part of its plan to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein.
"The US administration is responsible for the lack of progress in Vienna," Baath party official Saad Qassem Hammadi said in reference to the failed talks between Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
UN and Iraqi officials Friday admitted that negotiations on the return of UN weapons inspectors to the country had broken down. "One or two states are responsible for this," Sabri told Iraqi Youth Television.
"With their right of veto in the Security Council, they are preventing the council from doing its job with Iraq," Sabri said, referring to the United States and Britain and their hardline policy on Baghdad.
The results of the Vienna talks, the third since a resumption in dialogue between Iraq and the UN in March after a one-year hiatus, "weren't a surprise for us because US pressure on the UN delegation was known in advance," Hammadi said.
By applying pressure, the United States was seeking to "block the legitimate demands of Iraq being met ... as a prelude to an escalation against the country as part of the American plot," he told AFP. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
