Iraq urges all Arabs to hit back if US attacks

AMMAM - Iraq has called on Arabs to strike US interests in the Middle East if Washington attacks Baghdad, and the foreign minister denied his country was trying to produce nuclear weapons.

As US President George W. Bush prepared to present his case for ousting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to the United Nations, Iraq portrayed Washington as the aggressor and said the United States and Britain were spreading lies about Iraq's capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Washington's most outspoken ally, told trade union leaders Saddam was an "international outlaw" whose "barbaric regime" posed a threat that must be dealt with before it engulfed the world.

Blair's zeal for action against Iraq is not shared by other European leaders, and European Commission President Romano Prodi was the latest to make this clear, warning Bush that launching an attack on Iraq without UN Security Council backing could destroy his global anti-terror alliance.

Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan said US and British claims that Iraq was rebuilding its banned weapons programmes were lies, and restated the Iraqi position that UN weapons inspectors could return to Iraq only as part of a comprehensive deal with the United Nations.

"We call for confronting the aggression and aggressors not only by the Iraqi capability but we call on all the Arab masses ... to confront the material and human interests of the aggressors ..." Ramadan told a news conference in Amman.

"Iraq has a religious right to defend itself and ... all Arab citizens wherever they might be have the right to fight by all available means the aggression through its representatives on their land," he added.

"The West, and Britain and America in particular, are used to lying," Ramadan said. "We don't deny (these reports) or otherwise, we say the truth is that there are no weapons of mass destruction."

The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said on Monday Iraq could build a nuclear bomb soon if it acquired enriched uranium with foreign help, but that its ability to use other weapons of mass destruction had dwindled.

Ramadan said any country could be said to be able to build a nuclear weapon with foreign help -- even a poor country like Mauritania.

- REUTERS

Further reading:
Feature: War with Iraq

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