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| January 29, 2003 | Wednesday | Ziqa’ad 25,1423 |
Washington asked to silence war drums
ISLAMABAD, Jan 28: Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Secretary-General of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), an alliance of the six religious parties, said here on Tuesday a report by United Nations inspectors had quashed any legal or moral grounds for a war against Iraq, and urged the UN to prevent military action threatened by the United States.
The report delivered to the UN Security Council by chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix contained no proof that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, he said.
“The US cannot now continue with aggressive postures,” Fazl, who is also chief of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam which led violent protests against the US bombing of Afghanistan in October 2001, told AFP.
“The US had no justification in the first place to threaten Iraq. After the inspectors’ report it should stop beating the war drums.”
He also called for the lifting of sanctions imposed against Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War.
“The UN should show moral courage and spare more suffering of the innocent people of Iraq who have suffered economic strangulation for the last 12 years,” Fazl stressed.
The MMA scored dramatic gains in October elections after campaigning on an anti-US platform and promising to enforce Islamic Shariat. The alliance now leads the opposition in the federal parliament and controls the North West Frontier Province legislature.
Blix, who is charged with overseeing the elimination of Iraq’s chemical and biological arms and ballistic missiles, said his inspectors had found no banned weapons since they began work on Nov 27.
But while Iraq “has decided in principle to provide cooperation on process, notably access” to weapons sites, it had left many questions unanswered, he said.
The director-general of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed ElBaradei, said: “No prohibited nuclear activities have been identified during these inspections.”
The Pakistan government, a key US ally in the 15-month war against terrorism, was still considering its official response. It holds one of the 10 non-permanent seats on the Security Council.
Islamabad has yet to reveal how it would vote in a decision on whether to sanction war on Iraq, but it has issued several calls for conflict to be avoided. Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali is currently touring five Gulf states to discuss ways of avoiding war.—AFP
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