IRAQ severely criticised the UN arms inspector, Mr Richard Butler, and warned that a new crisis was looming yesterday after the Security Council renewed sanctions following his report on the lethal nerve gas VX. "There are signs of a new crisis being prepared with the UN Security Council to prolong the embargo against Iraq," an Iraqi official said.
The official, who asked not to be named, accused the United States of seeking "to provoke a new crisis" on the back of Mr Butler's charges that Iraq had placed VX on warheads before the 1991 Gulf War over Kuwait.
The presidential adviser, Gen Amer al Saadi, meanwhile, warned of a new deterioration in Baghdad's relations with the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) in charge of disarming Iraq that is headed by Mr Butler.
And a Western diplomat in the Iraqi capital said "the VX affair will have an impact on efforts to ease the sanctions", adding it would "take time to settle down".
The daily newspaper Babel, run by President Saddam Hussein's son Uday, charged that Mr Butler had "invented the story of VX gas . . . to feed the US lie machine against Iraq".
The aim of the United States was "to get bogged down in the details [of Baghdad's pre-war arms programmes] to perpetuate the sanctions against Iraq," said the Ath-Thawra newspaper of the ruling Baath Party.
The council on Wednesday extended sanctions on Baghdad for at least another two months after Mr Butler said Iraq had armed missile warheads with VX.
Mr Butler had presented the 15member council with the results of analyses in a US laboratory that he said proved Baghdad equipped missiles with VX before the Gulf conflict.
Iraq is contesting the analyses carried out by the US army laboratory on warhead fragments excavated by UN experts, which Mr Butler said revealed traces of VX disulphide and stabilizer.
But he agreed to additional tests in French and Swiss labs, as requested by Iraq which regards both UNSCOM and Washington as its adversaries, out of "a spirit of cooperation".
Mr Butler, who reached agreement with Iraq in mid-June on a two-month action plan to accelerate the disarmament process, also gave the Security Council an overview of progress with Baghdad.
But Gen al Saadi warned that relations with UNSCOM were now back at a low ebb.
"We were trying to rebuild confidence again and Butler was cordially received, and we had a professional session", when the UNSCOM chief visited Baghdad earlier this month, he said on Wednesday. "And now, suddenly, he's back like in November," said Gen al Saadi, referring to a crisis over arms inspections which was defused by an accord on February 23rd which Iraq struck with the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan. He said the VX charges would "definitely" harm ties between Iraq and UNSCOM.