BAGHDAD, Jan 29: Iraq accused UN disarmament inspectors on Wednesday of delivering a biased and unfair report, while President Saddam Hussein promised to defeat the United States if war were declared.

Babel, the newspaper of Saddam’s elder son Uday, protested the chief weapons inspectors’ findings were “unbalanced and unfair”, and vowed that an “unpleasant surprise” awaited any invaders.

Iraq has continued to promise further cooperation with the United Nations to avoid war, but President Saddam seems to be preparing himself for the worst, talking of victory in almost daily meetings with top aides and generals.

On Tuesday, he even called on Iraqi troops to learn from the willingness of Palestinian suicide bombers and Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan to lay down their lives in resisting any US-led attack.

“Despite the fact that Iraq did what it was asked to do ... despite its great cooperation ... despite all the constant provocations by the inspectors ... despite their entry into nearly 500 sites, the report came out in an unbalanced and unfair manner towards Iraq,” Babel said.

“We have been making sacrifices and we continue to do so every day because we do not want to see the faces of the American aggressors, unless they themselves insist on that, which then would be an unpleasant surprise for them and they would retreat in defeat,” said the influential tabloid.

The report the inspectors presented to the UN Security Council “spoke of gaps and material breaches which we do not know of or why they were so amplified”, Babel said in a front-page editorial.—AFP