UNITED NATIONS, Sept 20: President Saddam Hussein accused the Bush administration on Thursday of seeking to “destroy Iraq in order to control the Middle East oil.” He underscored that President Bush had made “distortions” to lead Americans to think Iraq had a role in the Sept 11 terrorist attacks.

In his letter, read before the UN General assembly by Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, Hussein said the Bush administration was planning an attack against Iraq in order to “control the politics as well as the oil and economic policies of the whole world.”

“If it succeeded in that, God forbid,” Hussein said, “it would dictate on you what each country needs for its economic development” by controlling the price and distribution of oil.

The Bush administration, he charged, was “acting on behalf of Zionism, which has been killing the heroic people of Palestine, destroying their property, murdering their children and seeking to impose their domination on the whole world.”

Hussein declared that Iraq is “clear of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.”

Making no pledges to cooperate with the UN arms inspectors who are preparing to return to Iraq after a nearly four-year hiatus Hussein expressed scepticism about their impartiality.

However, he offered that “any scientific experts accompanied by politicians you choose to represent any one of your countries” to come to Iraq to look for weapons.

He said Iraq would provide those foreign experts “all the facilities they need to achieve their objective.”

Meanwhile, most world leaders and diplomats continued to caution the United States and Britain against any hasty military action without exhausting diplomatic options through the United Nations.

CHINA: Chinese diplomats and delegates kept a low profile at the UN without giving a hint about what course would the veto-power-wielding nation in the Security Council would do about the new resolution being carved out by Washington and London.

China, as one of the five permanent members of the 15-nation UN Security Council, has the power to veto resolutions — including one sought by Washington which is expected to call for a tough UN mandate for unfettered inspections backed by force.

“Iraq should submit to unconditional weapons inspections,” Zhu Rongji China’s Prime Minister, who was on an official visit in Austria on his way to an ASEM in Copenhagen on Sept 22-24, was quoted by agencies as saying.

“But we have to respect Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and any action against Iraq should be under the mandate of the UN. I cannot speculate on any resolution that might be passed and have no further comment.”

The White House wants the UN Security Council to give inspectors greater powers than in the 1990s, when they complained that the Iraqis hindered and deceived them in their search for weapons.

MANDELA: Former South African President, Nelson Mandela, whose stature as a world’s elder statesman is respected by all, blasted the United States for “bullying the world.”

“We must condemn that very strongly. That’s why I criticize leaders for keeping quiet when one country wants to bully the whole world,” Mandela said when US President Bush dismissed Baghdad’s offer to allow UN weapons inspectors back in Iraq. Mandela labelled US vice-president Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld “dinosaurs...misleading the president,” and called the attitude of the US “a threat to world peace.”

He also accused the United States and Britain of being racist in their dealings with the United Nations. “Why should there be one standard for one country, especially because it is black, and another standard for another country, Israel, that is white?”

INSPECTORS: UN’s head of weapons inspection team, Hans Blix, briefed the Security Council in a closed meeting about his plans to renew inspections in Iraq, which were suspended in December 1998 when the inspectors were withdrawn in advance of an American and British bombing attack on Baghdad.

Talking to reporters after the Security Council meeting, Blix said he had told the Council that Iraqi officials had “not yet been ready” to work out logistical details at a meeting he held with them at the United Nations on Tuesday. Blix reported that the Iraqi officials said they would complete those practical discussions in talks in Vienna from Sept 30 to Oct 2.

According to a time line he presented to the Council, Blix said the advance team’s provisional starting date in Iraq was Oct 15.