February 10, 2003	Monday	Zul Hijjah 8,1423

BAGHDAD, Feb 9: Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, on a surprise visit to Tehran, held talks with his Iranian counterpart Kamal Kharazi, who warned Baghdad to cooperate with UN arms inspectors if it wanted to avoid a US attack.

— US Secretary of State Colin Powell heaped scorn on French and German proposals to peacefully disarm Iraq of any illicit weapons, saying they missed the point by dealing with the “wrong issue” and would serve only as a “diversion”.

— German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder will present the details of the French and German proposals to disarm Iraq to the Bundestag, or lower house of parliament, on Thursday, a defence ministry spokesman said.

— France denied the existence of a “secret” Franco-German plan on disarming Iraq but said it was in talks with Berlin about disarmament proposals made by Paris at the United Nations last week.

— Russia could support French and German proposals to disarm Iraq and is also ready to supply weapons experts to help UN inspections teams, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said.

— Belgium dealt a blow to US preparations for a war on Iraq, announcing it would veto a US request for NATO to provide military support and provoking a furious response from Washington.

— Work has begun on a second UN resolution that would authorise the use of force to disarm Iraq but President Saddam Hussein still has a “short period of time” in which he can move to avoid war, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said.

— Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak hosted a mini-summit on the Iraq crisis even as he acknowledged that Arab governments were powerless to stop a US-led war.

— President Saddam Hussein has approved the use of weapons of mass destruction if war is declared on Iraq, the US assistance secretary of defence, Peter Rodman, told an Egyptian newspaper, adding that Washington hoped to limit civils deaths and protect Iraq’s strategic oil wells.

— In uncharacterically strong language, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan Saturday warned against any unilateral strike on Iraq. Annan said the United Nations may soon have to make “a grim choice” on Iraq, but stressed the military option would always be the last, and not a decision for any one country to take alone, a thinly veiled reference to the growing US military buildup around Iraq.

— In Munich, senior US officials lashed out at France and Germany, both against military action, for not consulting Washington over a reported joint plan to disarm Iraq, saying it was “not the way to have a winning hand” with the United States.—AFP