IRAQ: In a defiant televised speech to the Iraqi people, President Saddam Hussein yesterday called on the United Nations to respect its own resolutions, and warned that whoever attacked Iraq would die in "disgraceful failure".
Pleading for "equitable dialogue", he said the UN Security Council should reply to questions asked by Baghdad about weapons inspections.
"The right way is that the Security Council should reply to the questions raised by Iraq, and should honour its obligations under its own resolutions," he said, referring to 19 questions about a possible American attack and the scope of weapons inspections that Iraq presented to the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, five months ago. Mr Annan passed them to the Security Council, which has not replied.
Iraq says it is willing to comply with UN resolutions on weapons inspections but claims that the resolutions are being manipulated by the US which, it says, is making additional demands.
Earlier, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Mr Naji Sabri, said Baghdad had "no problem" with resuming inspections "if it is done in accordance with UN agenda, that is, based on Security Council resolutions".
Interviewed by the BBC in Baghdad, he distinguished between what he called a US agenda and a UN agenda.
"The US agenda means inspectors have to prolong the sanctions, to spy on Iraq, to give data to American and British planes to hit Iraqi economic, security and military facilities. We \ are talking about UN agenda and if it is in accordance with a UN agenda it is different," he said.
In yesterday's speech on the anniversary of the ending of Iraq's eight-year war with Iran President Saddam eschewed his khaki battledress for a dark grey suit with a handkerchief in the breast pocket.
"There is no other choice for those who use threat and aggression but to be repelled," he told viewers in his 22-minute pre-recorded address. "I say this even though I had preferred to avoid referring to it. But I say it in such clear terms so that no weakling will imagine . . . that we are frightened by the impudent threats . . . and so that no greedy tyrant will be misled into an action the consequences of which are beyond their calculations."
As he spoke, about 15,000 members of the "al-Quds army" marched through Baghdad in a display of support for the President. They carried Kalashikov rifles and photographs of President Saddam, along with Palestinian and Iraqi flags.
In his TV appearance, President Saddam sounded upbeat about his country's predicament and told viewers that the Iraq-Iran war, which is thought to have cost more than a million lives, had ended in victory.
"The forces of evil will carry their coffins on their backs to die in disgraceful failure," he said. "Darkness shall be defeated, and every cloud that carries no useful rain shall be dispersed, giving way to the sun to usher in endless spring, blessed by God."
- (Guardian Service)