IRAQ: The Iraqi Vice-President, Mr Taha Yassin Ramadan, yesterday urged Arabs to hit back at US interests if Baghdad comes under attack. He accused Washington and London of preparing to go to war on the basis of a "pack of lies".
Speaking to the press in Amman after talks with Jordan's King Abdullah, Mr Ramadan called on the "Arab masses to fight against the material and human interests of the aggressors wherever they are. It is a human right" to resist "aggression against Iraq" which aims at imposing \ hegemony and neo-colonialism," he said.
Mr Ramadan appealed to Muslim solidarity: "Iraq has a religious right to defend itself and this being the case all Arab citizens everywhere should have the right to fight by all available means \ aggression by striking its representatives" in their countries.
Mr Ramadan denounced as "lies" US and British claims that Iraq is building weapons of mass destruction, prohibited by UN resolutions, and said that UN weapons inspectors would be permitted to resume their work in Iraq only as part of a comprehensive settlement of all outstanding issues between the UN and Iraq, which would involve the lifting of the punitive sanctions regime imposed in August 1990.
He insisted that Iraq had "a legitimate right" to defend itself and reminded Arab leaders of their decision at the March Arab summit that an attack on Iraq would be considered an attack on all Arabs. Mr Ramadan reiterated Baghdad's long-standing position that "there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq".
Arab analysts believe the increasingly shrill tone of Mr Ramadan's discourse is meant to warn the rulers of Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain that they should deny the US use of military facilities in any attack on Iraq, in much the same way Saudi Arabia has refused to grant Washington offensive use of its bases.
Delivering this message in Amman was seen as important because Jordan has been under growing pressure from Washington to permit US troops to launch one prong of an assault on Iraq from Jordanian territory.
Meanwhile, Iraq's Foreign Minister, Mr Naji Sabri, said in an interview with the Egyptian semi-official daily Al-Ahram, that the US was "closing the doors" on all attempts to find a peaceful solution to the stand-off on weapons inspections. Mr Sabri flatly rejected a the findings of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, a London-based think-tank, that Iraq retained the expertise to produce nuclear weapons "within a matter of months" if it succeeded in obtaining plutonium or enriched uranium.