IRAQ: The Iraqi Vice-President Mr Taha Yassin Ramadan, in an attack, yesterday accused UN inspectors searching for banned weapons in Iraq of being US and Israeli spies.
"The inspectors have come to provide better circumstances and more precise information for a coming aggression," Mr Ramadan said at a meeting with an Egyptian delegation in a Baghdad hotel.
"This is not an accusation, because the inspectors, from day one, their foremost work was spying.
"Their work was spying for the CIA and Mossad together," added Mr Ramadan, referring to the US Central Intelligence Agency and Israel's Mossad intelligence service.
Mr Ramadan said the inspection by the UN experts of one of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's palaces in Baghdad on Tuesday amounted to provocation.
"They were looking for a pretext so that we would tell them not to go in, and they would say that this is a material breach," of UN resolution 1441, he said.
The US yesterday pressed the UN to intensify its Iraq arms inspections, underscoring White House concerns that inspectors may not find evidence of weapons that Washington insists exist, and which could spark a US-led attack.
US President Bush said it was too early to tell whether Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was complying with the inspections which began last week, but said Saddam's record indicated he was "not somebody who looks like he's interested in complying with disarmament".
The comments came as Iraq said it would not admit to any banned weapons when it submits a UN-required declaration of its biological, chemical, nuclear and missile technologies by a weekend deadline.
"We believe, and we have said it publicly, they continue to have weapons of mass destruction - biological weapons and chemical weapons," White House spokesman Mr Ari Fleischer said. He said past Iraqi denials of its arms capabilities were proven false by earlier UN inspections.
He reiterated concerns the new round of UN inspections may fail to uncover banned weapons.
"Whether inspectors ultimately will be able to disprove any lie by the Iraqis remains to be determined," he said.
US Deputy Defence Secretary Mr Paul Wolfowitz cooled any talk of imminent war, however, saying Iraq's declaration to the UN would not in itself trigger a US decision on military action.
"I'm quite sure \ is not going to make it simply on the basis of one single piece of information," Mr Wolfowitz said in Brussels. "He's going to make it . . . also \ close consultation,particularly with our allies but indeed with the international community."
Mr Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate, said in Baghdad: "The declaration will repeat that in Iraq there are no weapons of mass destruction.
Meanwhile, Turkey insisted yesterday it had made no formal commitment to cooperate in any US strike against neighbouring Iraq.
A day after Turkey's foreign minister said Ankara would open its strategic airbases to US planes for a possible attack on Iraq, the prime minister's office issued a statement that appeared to backtrack on the offer.
"The government has not made a final political decision on this issue and has not committed itself to any obligations," the office of Turkish Prime Minister Mr Abdullah Gul said in a statement.
Foreign Minister Mr Yasar Yakis had told reporters after talks with Mr Wolfowitz on Tuesday that Ankara would open its airbases to US planes but on Wednesday he said he had been answering a hypothetical question.
Mr Wolfowitz proposed substantial economic aid to Turkey during discussions in Ankara on Iraq, with newspapers here speculating that Washington might forgive part of its €6 billion military debt. - ( Reuters)
US Marines in Kuwait yesterday went on full alert after an unidentified person wrote a love poem in Arabic on their military vehicle, reports Jack Fairweather.
The marines, unable to translate the simple phrase which begins many Arabic love songs, called the alert when they thought the message contained a terrorist threat.
But the translator who was sent for was able to confirm it was merely a poem, the words reading "I love you forever. Your beauty is incomparable". "We're not used to such things," said one US soldier serving at Camp Doha, the military base in Kuwait where troops are preparing for a possible war against Iraq.