CAIRO/AMMAN, Feb 17: Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh was quoted on Sunday as warning the US that it would “lose its allies” in the region if it attacked Iraq.

However, he said in an interview with the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat that he was pressuring the Iraqi leadership to accept the return to his country of UN inspectors, who were evacuated from there at the end of 1998 shortly before the US and Britain carried out a massive aerial strike against Iraqi targets.

“Such a strike will not be an easy task, because it will lead to a radical change in coalitions in the region, whereby the US will lose its Arab allies,” he said.

“We are urging our brethren in Iraq to accept the return of the inspectors, whose mission was already approved (by Baghdad), and deprive the US of any pretext,” he added.

He pointed out that Baghdad “may commit the UN to a condition that the inspectors dispatched to Iraq be not spies”, a reference to Iraqi allegations that the inspector squads were forced to leave Iraq “because they were involved in espionage activities for the US and Israel”.

However, the Yemeni President said that he “personally believed such a strike will not take place”. “What they are going to strike? Will they hit an already crushed people?” he said.—dpa