We welcome special mission says Iraq

By WILLIAM MacLEAN in Johannesburg

Iraq says it is ready to work with the United Nations on an overall solution to its crisis with the United States, provided US concerns about its weapons programmes are genuine and not a pretext to attack.

Speaking after talks last night with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister repeated an invitation to US politicians to visit Iraq to check for themselves whether it had weapons of mass destruction.

"Let them tell us and the world that their concerns are genuine and that they are not using them as a pretext to attack Iraq - if those concerns are genuine we can find a solution to that," said Tareq Aziz, who was attending the Earth Summit in Johannesburg.

"We invited the Americans themselves, we invited the British to come.

"If they come for a special mission they are welcome because that is what we want them to do. But if they send people who will drag their feet for years without reaching a conclusion, as they did for 7 1/2 years, that's not going to work."

Iraq's invitation to US politicians with no technical expertise to carry out weapons checks has been ridiculed in the West as a ploy to avoid international monitoring of its armaments.

Aziz said a comprehensive solution would involve tackling what he called US threats to Iraq, US and British air patrols over the north and south of Iraq, the lifting of sanctions and US threats to change Iraq's political system.

Annan said the meeting was part of continuing talks between Baghdad and the UN on the return of weapons inspectors four years after they left. This in turn would lead to a "comprehensive solution including the lifting of sanctions".

UN arms experts left Iraq in December 1998 ahead of a US-British bombing campaign to punish Baghdad for its alleged failure to co-operate with inspectors.

Washington says Iraq is part of an "axis of evil" and has used Baghdad's alleged possession of chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons to underpin President George W. Bush's campaign for a "regime change" - a euphemism for ousting President Saddam Hussein.

Iraq says such weapons have already been destroyed and it refuses to allow the return of arms inspectors until UN sanctions - imposed after the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait - are lifted.

US Vice-President Dick Cheney, keeping up calls for military action against Iraq, said last week that Saddam posed a "mortal threat" and argued that the return of the inspectors should not be the prime objective.

But US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday that Washington wanted UN weapons inspectors to return.

Aziz said: "If the question of so-called weapons of mass destruction is a genuine concern by the US, this matter could be dealt with reasonably and equitably. But if it is a pretext for [regime] change ... then they will use whatever pretext that remains in their hands to attack Iraq."

Asked to define what an overall solution would tackle, Aziz said these were the inspections, sanctions and Iraq's sovereignty and integrity.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer dismissed similar comments that Aziz made on Monday, saying Iraq frequently changed its position on allowing inspectors back and that Iraqi officials "don't have a history of reliability".

- REUTERS

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