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Saddam aide: U.N. report skewed
An aide to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has accused U.N. weapons inspectors of skewing the facts in their report to the Security Council and said Iraq has accounted for its stocks of nerve gas and anthrax. Iraqi presidential adviser Gen. Amer Rasheed said Tuesday that Iraq has provided "complete cooperation in every aspect" but is willing to do more to help weapons inspectors. "We are ready to explain all of these issues. But we have to do it in a cooperative manner -- not as if we are a suspect," Rasheed said. That's the problem, Rasheed, you are a suspect, you just won't admit it. It's called denial. Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix told the Security Council Monday that Iraq had not fully accounted for its chemical and biological weapons programs and had not fully accepted the inspection regime mandated by U.N. resolutions. Rasheed called the report unfair. "There was no proportionate presentation of the facts," he said. "Some parts have been amplified and magnified to what are called problems, so it gives a (negative) impact, while important issues have been abbreviated and sometimes even fully ignored." Rasheed said Iraq's stocks of the nerve agent VX were never pure enough to last more than a few years and have deteriorated, and that the shelf life of the liquid anthrax it produced "would be only so few years." "And we poured them down the toilet. Why don't you believe us?" Rasheed said the only disputes that remain between Iraq and the inspectors concern overflights by a U.S. spy plane on loan to the United Nations, and the interviewing of Iraqi scientists. "The Iraqi point of view was not presented at all regarding the U-2 and also regarding the interviews," Rasheed said. We know your point of view on these already. Blix said no Iraqis have agreed to private interviews so far. Tuesday, he said Iraq had demanded to be allowed to import radar systems capable of tracking the aircraft from sites in northern and southern Iraq. Iraqi air defense radar systems have been battered by U.S. and British warplanes enforcing the "no-fly" zones imposed over northern and southern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. "No,you can't have any more radar systems. You broke all the ones you got for your birthday. Now, shut up and sit down." Posted by: Steve 2003-01-28 |
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