Iraq said today it "could not care less" about threats of military action against it from the United States. The reaction came after US Vice-president Dick Cheney urged swift, pre-emptive military action against Baghdad.
"We could not care less about the threats that are out there. Iraq has a long history with these threats and such despotism," Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan told reporters in Syria after meeting President Bashar al-Assad.
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He said Iraq had lived with US threats too long to quake now. He added that Cheney's position "can only express the depth of rancour and hatred for the Arab and Muslim nations."
Iraq earlier renewed a call for talks with the United Nations but branded the UN weapons inspections chief a "spy."
"We confirm that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction and inspectors are just spies," Mr Ramadan said. But he called for more talks between Baghdad and the UN on a return of inspectors.
"The US administration has made it clear through President Bush that the problem was not the return of inspectors but the Iraqi regime, which Washington wants to topple," he said.
Mr Ramadan called on UN Secretary General Mr Kofi Annan to fix a date "for a new round of talks," expressing hope the UN Security Council would free itself from US hegemony.
In an interview, Mr Ramadan accused UN disarmament chief Mr Hans Blix of replying "without tact or manners" to Baghdad's proposal to Mr Annan to pursue technical talks about a possible resumption of weapons inspections.
Mr Blix, head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, dismissed Iraq's offer as "not very productive" and opposed any conditions on inspections.
Speaking to army veterans in Nashville, Tennessee, last night, Mr Cheney warned: "What we must not do in the face of a mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or willful blindness. "We will not simply look away, hope for the best and leave the matter for some future administration to resolve," he said, adding the United States would work with its allies but had a moral obligation to act.
His comments come amid slipping public support for ousting Saddam and growing scepticism about Mr Bush's Iraq policy.
Egyptian President Mr Hosni Mubarak said today there was not "one Arab state that wanted a strike on Iraq, not Kuwait, not Saudi Arabia, not any other state".
AFPand