PARIS, Feb 6: As far as Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz is concerned, “the only reason for the upcoming US-led attack on Iraq is to turn us into a colony of the United States.”

In a front-page seven-column interview in the French national daily Le Figaro, that when UN weapons inspector Hans Blix returns to Baghdad on Feb. 8, he and Iraqi authorities do plan on showing greater cooperation with the UN inspectors, to the point of allowing them henceforth to interview Iraqi scientists, proposing the vote of a constitutional law forbidding the future production of arms of massive destruction, and perhaps allowing, under certain conditions, the overflight of Iraqi territory by U2 spy planes.

Mr Aziz said: “The truth is that the Americans want to grab our oil because we have the second most important reserves in the world. Which is why the international community should think of resisting this war simply because it’s in their best interest. Indeed, the only ones who have anything to gain from such a war is the American oil lobby and the US military-industrial complex. As for the American people, it has absolutely nothing to win from a US attack.”

Mr Aziz asserted that “absolutely no links exist between us and Al Qaeda. Our secular regime, let’s not forget it, has always battled vigorously against fundamentalism. Indeed, let me remind you that we didn’t take part (as did countries with significant populations) in the campaigns of the Afghans against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.”

With regard to accusations recently brought by the United States against Iraq, according to which the Muslim Ansar ul Islam militia had been implanted by Iraqi authorities in the autonomous Kurd-dominated northern part of the country, to allow it to develop a sanctuary for Al Qaeda and its leaders, Mr Aziz retorted that “it’s a rumour which has been taken seriously only by the United States and which doesn’t hold water.”

“This accusation,” he continued, “is nothing but provocation, a stupid one, for indeed we can show that when we were asked by Mr Talabani, the Kurd leader and his autonomous Kurds to combat Ansar ul Islam, we said yes and provided them with large stores of arms and munitions, even if in doing so we chose in fact to collaborate with a rebel movement.”