BAGHDAD, Jan 26: Former UN official Denis Halliday warned here Sunday that the United States and Britain were ready to “annihilate” Iraqi society in order to control the country’s oil wealth.
Halliday told a press conference that “the United States and Britain are proceeding with plans to annihilate Iraqi society, a catastrophe that would be heightened by the threatened use of tactical nuclear weaponry.”
“Washington has informed us that the very security of America require ever-increasing quantities of oil and the source of that oil can only be the Middle East,” he said.
Halliday said that since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States, “the relationship between Washington and Saudi Arabia has become fragile, therefore making that massive flow of cheap oil insecure.”
“Iraq constitutes one very large reserve tank — a tank of some 120 billion barrels — and control of that tank has become paramount for the very survival of American economic superiority,” he charged.
Halliday, an Irishman, was based in Baghdad between August 1997 and October 1998. He resigned in protest at continued UN sanctions against Iraq in place since its 1990 invasion of neighbouring Kuwait.
“The United Nations has cruelly damaged the social, economic and cultural rights of the Iraqi people under sanctions for over 12 years. We have allowed massive loss of life,” he said.
Halliday, who was due to meet with Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz and Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, said that his “impression” from talking to Iraqi officials is that they believed war “cannot be stopped.”
“My impression from talking to colleagues and friends from the government here in Baghdad is that they are confident that it (war) cannot be stopped,” he said.
“I sense the priority is moving from finding ways to satisfy the UN or perhaps Washington and London, moving toward preparing for what looks like an inevitable war,” he added.
10 SITES: Scores of UN weapons experts searched 10 Iraqi sites on Sunday, including a former research laboratory suspected of developing the deadly biological agents anthrax, botulium and ricin.
The searches came on the eve of a crucial report to the UN Security Council on the progress inspectors have made in their search for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.—AFP/ Reuters
