UN weapons inspections in Iraq are over, the Iraqi information minister said Monday in the clearest rejection yet of American and UN demands to allow inspectors to resume their work after a four-year standoff.
Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf told the the Qatar-based Al- Jazeera TV in an interview that the Bush administration was "confused," was making inspections into an issue in a bid to use it in the latest crisis between Washington and Baghdad.
"This is a lie," he said of Washington's insistence Iraq still possesses weapons of mass destruction. "Inspections have finished in Iraq."
The return of inspectors is a key demand of the United States, which has accused Iraq of trying to rebuild its weapons programs and of supporting terrorism.
The Information Minister described as "bats" and a "bad American product" Iraqi opposition members who held talks with top US officials over the weekend on plans to topple Saddam. "These bats are an American product. They are only a bad American product," al-Sahhaf told Al-Jazeera.
It was the first reaction from Baghdad to talks in Washington over the weekend between representatives of six Iraqi opposition groups and US officials including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Sahhaf called the cooperation between the opposition and the US administration a "game that reflects the weakness of the American position."
Meanwhile, the Iraqi newspaper Babel said Monday "President Bush has today run into a major dead-end because he has not until now been able to persuade the world and the American people with his lies and slander intended to justify an attack against Iraq." "No one believes his empty allegations about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction, sheltering groups linked to Al-Qaeda and threatening neighbours," said the daily run by President Saddam Hussein's elder son, Uday.
For its part, Al-Jumhuriya newspaper wrote "The isolation of the evil American administration has grown because of its bragging, aggressive threats and fabrications against Iraq." "That has put the American administration in a real impasse, undone by contradictory statements by American officials and their aggressive intentions against Iraq," the government daily added.
"Bush junior sometimes employs the language of threat and invective ... and sometimes claims he will be patient and has not fixed a deadline" to launch an assault. "Those who make threats and speak with the arrogance of power about an invasion of Iraq are the same ones whose hostile plans Iraq has defeated during more than 12 years of sacrifice and resistance," the newspaper said.
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
