Iraq ready to accept new UN resolution: Senators behind Bush
NEW YORK, Oct 6: Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations Mohammed Aldouri said on Sunday Baghdad would be willing to consider a new UN Security Council resolution on weapons inspections.
“We are not rejecting any resolutions of the Security Council,” Aldouri told ABC television, when asked about such a possibility. “We will see these resolutions. First of all to have this resolution in our hand, and after that we can conclude.”
Iraq wants “to finish with this problem so to see the blockade, the sanctions lifted,” “ Aldouri stressed. “So we would facilitate, we would do anything really to finish with that item, with the question of mass destruction ... because of one reason, simple reason — we don’t have mass destruction weapons.” The Iraqi diplomat, asked about UN arms inspections, said: “We are saying that we are willing to have those inspectors very soon without conditions, unfettered inspections.
“I don’t think there will be a problem with that for anybody for any state, only with the United States because their main goal is the change of regime and they don’t want inspectors back in Iraq.”
“There is no need for that,” he said, arguing it was an unnecessary US condition. “They want to complicate it because their ultimate goal is not inspection itself .. they want to use those inspectors to their own goals, that means regime change.”
Asked if diplomats might be allowed to accompany international inspectors, Aldouri said: “This is the opinion of the United States .. this is not the position of Russia, China and France.”
“The only important American goal .. is to control Iraqi oil. We cannot see any other reason for America attacking Iraq,” Aldouri said.
US SENATORS: Legislators on Sunday appeared to fall in line behind President George W. Bush’s call to use force if necessary to disarm Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein.
Lawmakers were to debate the issue in Congress on Tuesday, and Bush was expected to take to the television airwaves to plead his case for armed action late on Monday.
Democratic Senate Minority leader Thomas Daschle told NBC television he expected the measure Bush wants passed by the Congress to be adopted by the Senate by a broad majority “later this week or shortly thereafter.”
“This is the first preemptive, unilateral authorization of the use of force that we’ve ever passed, and so we want to be sure that we do it right,” he added, saying a 75-25 vote could be “in the range of what we could expect.”—AFP
