Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said today US and British planes patrolling two "no-fly" zones over the country should not launch raids on Iraq during U- 2 surveillance flights.
Saddam's comments, read on state television, appeared to be setting a condition for the flights shortly after Iraq's UN envoy said Baghdad accepted the flights unconditionally.
But an Iraqi source at the United Nations said no such condition existed in the letter that Iraq had delivered to UN weapons inspectors in New York.
Iraq had previously said it could not guarantee the safety of the U-2 planes while coalition planes patrolled the zones. "If the world, besides America, finds that the U-2 plane is important to carry out more aerial surveillance, it should tell America and Britain not to open fire at us. Otherwise, this demand would be a call for the surrender of Iraq to the American military force...," Saddam said.
The Iraqi leader said Baghdad had agreed to all the demands of UN weapons inspectors and they had still not found any weapons of mass destruction which he said Iraq did not posses.