March 9, 2003	Sunday	Muharram 5, 1424

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BAGHDAD, March 8: Baghdad said on Saturday it viewed the new disarmament report delivered to the United Nations as “fair” but likely to offer only a brief respite on the road to war.

The newspaper of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s elder son lauded the work of chief weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei and accused Washington of leading the world to the “abyss.”

The Babel daily, owned by Uday Hussein, said their reports on Friday to a highly-charged UN Security Council meeting proved that Baghdad was fully cooperating with UN inspectors.

“That the reports of Blix and ElBaradei were fair toward us did not surprise us, given the great sacrifices made by Iraq to cooperate with UN Resolution 1441” on disarmament, Babel said in an editorial.

“We knew that the facilities and cooperation which we offered exceeded the expectations of those trying to deform the image of our country.”

The reports by Mr Blix and International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mr ElBaradei came ahead of a possible vote next week on a new resolution proposed by the United States, Britain and Spain which would authorise the use of force against Iraq.

Iraqi political analyst Abdulwahab al-Qassab described the Blix report as “largely positive and (the) outstanding issues that it raised are technical and procedural and can be resolved through negotiation.”

“The Franco-Russian front seems determined to stop a resolution authorising the use of force. If the United States gets the nine necessary votes, the fate of this resolution will depend on an eventual use of the right of veto by France and Russia, but will the Americans respect that?” Mr Qassab asked.

Iraqi MP Mudhaffar al-Adhami said Mr Blix’s “objective and positive” report “brought up a lot of evidence showing that Iraq is cooperating actively with the inspection teams. And this is very important.”—AFP