BAGHDAD, Nov 9: Iraq on Saturday described a UN security council resolution imposing sweeping arms inspection terms as unfair and unjustified, but hinted President Saddam Hussein might accept it to deny Washington a chance to attack.
“The Iraqi government is “quietly studying” the new “unfair” resolution on Iraq’s disarmament and will respond to it “in the coming days,” the official INA news agency said, quoting a source.
“Although Resolution 1441 (passed on Friday) was bad and unfair, the leadership in Iraq is quietly studying this resolution and will issue the appropriate signal concerning it in the coming days,” the agency said.
By adopting the unanimously-approved document, “the international community has aborted a decision by the United States to use force against Iraq”, Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said after a meeting with his Egyptian counterpart in Cairo.
“We are in the process of studying the resolution in Baghdad and Iraq’s position will be announced later,” he told reporters.
Specifically asked if Iraq would comply with the terms of the resolution, which calls on it to get rid of all of its alleged weapons of mass destruction or face “serious consequences”, Sabri said Baghdad “would study the resolution and adopt an appropriate position”.
Commenting on the security council vote, he said “the international community is not on the same plane as the American malefactors” and has rejected “the logic of the administration of evil and its demented desire for war.
The government dailies Al-Jumhuriya and Al-Qadissiya ran news of the “unjustified” resolution in brief inside-page reports, and commentaries written before the vote kept up diatribes against the United States.
But the influential daily Babel confirmed the impression that Baghdad, keen to avert a US strike, was keeping its options open about accepting the new UN terms.
“The most important thing is the awareness of our wise leadership which, with its customary cleverness, will seek to deny the Bush administration a chance to exploit any circumstances or situation” to implement its designs against Iraq, said Babel, which is run by Saddam’s elder son, Uday.
Thus, the Iraqi leadership will derail Washington’s “evil” plans whatever channels it seeks to use, “including this infamous resolution which was endorsed by those who previously objected to it”, the paper said.
“Even you, Syria, endorsed the resolution” during Friday’s vote in New York, Babel lamented in a front-page editorial titled “Et tu Brute”.
Syria, one of the non-permanent members of the security council, joined the 14 other members of the world body in voting for the US-drafted resolution which warned Iraq of “serious consequences” unless it complied with a stringent inspections regime aimed at scrapping its alleged weapons of mass destruction.
Babel, the only Baghdad daily to comment on the voting on Resolution 1441, reiterated that Iraq had no prohibited weapons and charged that the administration of US President George Bush would pressure the arms inspection teams to “provoke” Iraq.
In the same vein, “US intelligence will do all it can to ensure that the inspections are carried out in a way compatible with its goals,” Babel said, referring to long-standing Iraqi charges that UN inspections were used in the past to spy on Iraq.
“The new resolution is new only in name but otherwise contains all that we previously rejected and confirms Bush’s hostile intentions” toward Iraq, said Babel.
The resolution is a compilation of “binding terms, each worse than the other, not to mention the absolute powers it gives the inspection teams and which are liable to be exploited by US intelligence — hence the threats issued by Bush even before knowing Iraq’s opinion on this resolution”.
Baghdad was given seven days to accept the new resolution, and according to a Western diplomat here, it will make full use of that time to “thoroughly think over” the UN document given the “very tough terms” it imposes.
Though one would have to wait for the official response, it is not unlikely that Baghdad will acquiesce to the resolution, the diplomat said.
An Iraqi official suggested that Baghdad could decide to see the silver lining in the new resolution despite the fact that the document is “bad, harsh and totally unjustified”.
At least “it enabled the United Nations to regain the initiative on matters of world security instead of leaving them in the hands of a US administration that is running amok”, he said.
Iraqi officials have repeatedly said that a new resolution would be superfluous given Baghdad’s consent to readmit arms inspectors after a four-year break and accused the Bush administration of seeking to set the stage for an attack on Baghdad.
But US Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested on Friday that Washington might stop calling for a change of government in Baghdad if Iraq cooperated fully with the arms inspectors.—AFP