November 19, 2002	Tuesday	Ramazan 13, 1423

WASHINGTON, Nov 18: The United States could ask the UN security council to address its complaints of Iraq shooting at US and British aircraft enforcing “no-fly” zones over parts of that country, the White House said on Monday.

“We reserve that option of taking that to the Security Council when it comes to our aircraft in no-fly zones,” spokesman Scott McClellan said.

Earlier, F-16 fighter aircraft operating out of Turkey bombed two anti-aircraft sites near the northern city of Mosul after they fired on coalition aircraft, a US defence official said.

The White House said the anti-aircraft fire was a “material breach” of the Nov 8 UN resolution demanding Iraq disarm.

“It is a material breach,” McClellan said. “And what the UN resolution allows us to do is it gives us the option, if we choose, to take that to the Security Council.”

WAR OF WORDS: In a war of words with Baghdad, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Monday it was “unacceptable” for Iraq to shoot at US and British warplanes patrolling “no-fly” zones there. But he stopped short of saying it might trigger war.

“I do find it unacceptable that Iraq fires,” Rumsfeld told a press conference in Chile’s capital, but added that, “It is for the president of the United States and the UN Security Council to make judgments about their view of Iraq’s behaviour over a period of time.”

Rumsfeld said in the past week that he thought the continued attempts to shoot down the warplanes policing “no-fly” zones over northern and southern Iraq was a violation of a new UN Security Council resolution warning President Saddam Hussein to give up weapons of mass destruction.

In Baghdad, Iraq said on Monday that those claims of a violation after more than 10 years of such tit-for-tat exchanges in the zones showed that Washington was using the text of this month’s resolution to justify its “aggressive intentions”.

As he did in an earlier interview with reporters travelling with him to Santiago, Rumsfeld seemed to back away from any suggestion that the no-fly zone exchanges might trigger an invasion of Iraq. The exchanges have increased sharply in recent months as speculation has grown that the United States might launch an invasion to oust Saddam.

An Iraqi foreign ministry spokesman in Baghdad said on Monday that “the whole international community has condemned imposing the no-fly zones”.

SANCTIONS: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak said on Monday they hoped the UN disarmament process in Iraq would lead to the lifting of sanctions.

After a meeting here they urged Iraq to “respect international law so as to avert a military strike” and welcomed its vow to cooperate fully with UN arms inspectors.

“This will lead to the lifting of the embargo imposed on Iraq and put an end to the suffering endured by the Iraqi people,” Assad and Mubarak said.

On the Middle East conflict, the two Arab leaders said peace depended on “implementation of UN resolutions calling for Israel’s withdrawal from all Arab territories occupied in 1967”.—Reuters/AFP