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BAGHDAD, Oct 10: Iraq, trying to avert a US attack, invited the Bush administration on Thursday to see for itself that Baghdad was not producing weapons of mass destruction.
Washington spurned the latest offer, issued just as both houses of Congress prepared to approve a resolution authorizing a possible US military strike on Iraq.
“If the Americans commit a new foolish action against Iraq, we will teach them an unforgettable lesson,” Abdul Tawab Mullah Hwaish, an Iraqi deputy prime minister, told a news conference in Baghdad.
“The American administration are invited to inspect these sites,” he said. “As I am responsible for the Iraqi weapons programmes, I confirm here that we have no weapons of mass destruction and we have no intention to produce them.”
On the ground, US and British warplanes attacked Iraqi air defences in two locations on Thursday in a southern “no-fly” zone, US officials said. Such attacks have increased in recent months. Iraq said US jets had raided the Basra civilian airport — an airfield Washington says also serves a military purpose.
Oil prices retreated to their lowest level in three weeks on Thursday, as the prospect of a US war against Iraq appeared to recede and oil supplies looked healthy, dealers said.
US President George W. Bush, eager to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, wants Congress to back a possible military strike should Iraq not cooperate fully with U.N. inspectors looking for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons capability.
Iraq has agreed, under intense US pressure, to allow arms inspectors to return after a four-year absence, but the 15-nation U.N. Security Council is still locked in negotiations on how intrusive it wants U.N. inspections to be.
The US House of Representatives, led by Bush’s Republican party, was expected to pass the resolution late on Thursday. The Democratic-led Senate was expected to follow suit by Friday.
“I hope the US Congress will act promptly on its resolution...because that will show that America is united behind this effort,” Secretary of State Colin Powell told CNN’s Larry King on Wednesday.
Powell said he hoped Washington would win support in the Security Council for a new resolution on disarming Iraq “within a matter of days or perhaps a week or two”.
Among the five permanent members of the Security Council, only the United States and Britain have backed a single U.N. resolution that would threaten Iraq with military action if it blocked inspections.
BLAIR IN RUSSIA: France, another permanent has pushed for a “two-step” approach, which it says would ensure wider international backing for any final decision to intervene militarily.
Russia and China are also permanent members of the Security Council, each with the power to veto a resolution. British Prime Minister Tony Blair planned to fly on Thursday to Russia to seek President Vladimir Putin’s backing.
Softening France’s resistance to US demands, President Jacques Chirac agreed on Wednesday that U.N. arms inspectors should be given greater powers in an initial resolution.
“The president said he was amenable to strengthening the powers and the means of action of the inspectors,” Chirac’s spokeswoman said, without giving further details.
In Warsaw, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin told a news conference on Thursday that Chirac and Bush had spoken by phone on Wednesday.
“We believe that the first resolution should not threaten use of military force,” Villepin said.
“Our goal is for Iraq to allow total, unconditional access to inspectors searching for weapons of mass destruction. If this return proves impossible, we favour a second resolution which would allow the use of all means,” he added.
Chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix wants to send an advance team to Iraq by the end of the month, by which time he hopes the Security Council will have adopted a new resolution.—Reuters
