A rchive Date
[ 04-01-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iraq ]
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[http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/world/1724153
Iraq rejects Bush's comment on peaceful solution to crisis
Associated Press
Jan. 3, 2003, 11:47PM
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq on Friday dismissed President Bush's statement that he hoped the crisis over Iraqi arms could be overcome peacefully, saying it was hard to believe he had "suddenly become rational."
Speaking of what Iraqi officials regard as Bush's penchant for aggression, the official daily Al-Iraq said "the dog's tail will never be straight" -- the Arabic version of the English-language maxim "you can't teach an old dog new tricks."
Also Friday, U.N. arms inspectors searching for banned weapons revisited two sites -- the Al Rasheed Co. headquarters, about 35 miles southwest of Baghdad, which manufactures missile propellants, and the Al Basil Co., which produces chemicals, on the outskirts of the capital.
As usual, U.N. officials didn't say why they returned to the two sites.
Iraq asserted on Thursday that it was certain that U.N. arms experts found nothing in five weeks of searches that would prove Saddam Hussein's regime has chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, or the means to deliver them. But a U.N. spokesman in New York said it was too early to come to "instant conclusions."
But U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said on Friday that he had questions about Iraq's arms declaration that he'll be raising with Iraqi officials when he returns to Baghdad later this month.
"There are a couple of questions that have arisen as a result of the long declaration ... and we'd like to follow up some of those," Blix said in New York.
Blix told the Security Council last month that Iraq's declaration did not include a list of nutrients Baghdad acquired for producing biological warfare agents including anthrax, and Iraq's reporting of its destruction of anthrax supplies between 1988 and 1991 "may not be accurate."
While saying the Iraqis had been cooperating with U.N. inspectors on the ground, Blix did not confirm Iraqi claims that his inspectors had found nothing so far.
Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said in an interview late Thursday on Iraq's satellite TV channel that the inspectors had visited all sites that the United States and Britain claim contain banned weapons, but had found nothing.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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