Members of Iraqi Parliament attend a meeting in Baghdad, October 12,2002. Iraq mingled words of conciliation with defiance as its parliament prepared to hold an emergency session to respond to a U.S. Congress vote authorizing President Bush to wage war on Baghdad. Photo by Suhaib Salem/Reuters

The Iraqi Parliment meets in response to U S Congress voting for war with Iraq: the Muslim clerics promote holy war on the U S

Is there anyone so foolish as to think that the U S is just going to walk into Iraq and take over.  

Does anyone realize that if a holy war starts in the Middle East, then Israel will be wiped out.  

All the American war technology is worthless against Islamic suicide bombers.  But the bombs will not be limited to the Middle East.  In American malls and theaters and churches and other mass gatherings, the bombs are going to be exploding.

In the end, the political situation is going to deteriorate into a Christian/Muslim war with the Buddhist of the Asia watching the chaos.

John WorldPeace
October 13,  2002

Iraq defiant after Bush receives vote

by Nadim Ladki and Steve Holland, Reuters

BAGHDAD/WASHINGTON (Oct. 12) - Iraq mingled words of conciliation with defiance on Saturday after the U.S. Congress voted to authorise President George W. Bush to wage war on Baghdad.

An adviser to President Saddam Hussein sent a letter to U.N. weapons inspectors saying Iraq was ready to remove all obstacles to a return of inspectors after a nearly four-year break.

"We assert our complete readiness once again to receive the advance team on October 19 as per our preliminary agreement with you and our readiness to resolve all issues that may block the road to our joint cooperation," wrote General Amir al-Saadi.

The new letter to chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, acknowledges their desire for "unfettered access" to eight controversial palace sites of Saddam's, but makes no specific concession on the issue.

The letter did suggest a new flexibility on allowing inspectors to interview Iraqis and to make flights over Iraqi territory. But it seemed far from likely to satisfy U.S. demands for unconditional acceptance of inspections. Washington dismissed an earlier Iraqi letter this week as evasive.

Britain, Washington's closest ally, suggested earlier on Saturday the likelihood of conflict was receding because Iraq's threatened leadership was making concessions on inspections, designed to expose suspected programs to develop nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told BBC radio the prospect of war had moved "probably further away."

"Just four weeks ago (the Iraqis) were saying they would not have the inspectors back in any circumstances, that they had no weapons of mass destruction. There is only one reason why they have moved this far -- not far enough -- but this far, and that is because of the potential threat of force," he said.

"What we face here is a paradox. The firmer and tougher we are up front about the fact that we will use force in Iraq...the more likely there is to be a peaceful resolution."

Iraq's vice president said in an interview Baghdad was ready to allow weapons inspectors to visit the presidential palaces.

"The inspectors can search and inspect however and wherever they would like," Taha Yassin Ramadan told a German magazine. It was unclear whether he meant Iraq was now willing to abandon past procedural restrictions on palace access.

Reacting to Ramadan's comments, a Bush administration official said Iraq appeared to have "three different positions" on access to the palaces. "There will be no negotiations with the Iraqis," the official added.

IRAQI CLERICS CALL FOR JIHAD

The mood at a Baghdad religious meeting was far from conciliatory. Some 500 Iraqi Muslim clerics and scholars issued an edict urging Muslims everywhere to launch a holy war to "burn the earth under the feet" of the United States if it attacked.

"If, God forbid, the aggression takes place, declaring Jihad against the evil American administration is the duty of every able Muslim," their edict or fatwa said, adding that this should include enlisting to fight alongside Iraq, striking U.S. interests and launching economic boycotts of the United States and its allies.

Foreign Minister Naji Sabri briefed Iraqi's parliament "on the dimensions of the rude American threats to launch a new aggression," on U.S. efforts to pass a new U.N. resolution and on arms inspections, the Iraqi News Agency (INA) said.

A statement by the assembly made no mention of the standoff over inspections, but denounced recommendations by the U.S. Congress that Jerusalem be identified as Israel's capital.

Authorities in Kuwait, a probable military launchpad for any U.S. attack on Iraq, said they had arrested 26 suspects who had formed an al Qaeda-style "cell" to attack Kuwaiti and American targets in the oil-rich state.

Two alleged members of the cell, who Kuwait said had trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, were killed on Tuesday during an attack on U.S. Marines training on a Kuwaiti island. One Marine was killed and another wounded.

To the north of Iraq, there was unease over the direction of U.S. policy from another key U.S. military ally. Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit warned the United States not to encourage Iraqi Kurds to found their own state as that could force Turkey to intervene to protect its interests.

Turkey has sent its army into northern Iraq several times to attack Kurdish guerrillas. But it also allows U.S. and British warplanes to use an air base in Turkey to patrol a no-fly zone over northern Iraq set up after the 1991 Gulf War to protect the Kurds. Turkey would be a crucial base for Western warplanes in the event of war with Iraq.

BUSH SAYS AMERICA SPEAKING WITH ONE VOICE

After winning the authorisation of Congress to attack Iraq, Bush said in his weekly radio address on Saturday: "America is speaking with one voice: Iraq must disarm and comply with all existing U.N. resolutions, or it will be forced to comply."

The United States now takes its case to the United Nations, where many states want a compromise likely to delay any outbreak of war.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said most U.N. members preferred a French proposal for two resolutions: one to first establish tougher inspection conditions and a second that would approve the use of force if these conditions were not met.

The United States wants a single resolution demanding that Iraq give inspectors "unfettered access," and granting Washington the right to decide when and if Iraq has violated the inspection regime and to attack without further authorisation.

Yelling "No blood for oil," 6,000 people marched through Paris on Saturday in France's first major anti-war protest.

The United Nations sent arms experts to Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction after U.S.-led forces drove Iraqi troops from Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War. The inspectors left in 1998 before a U.S.-British air assault to punish Baghdad for not cooperating with the U.N. experts.

BAGHDAD — Iraq reserves the right to end cooperation with U.N. weapons inspections if it deems Washington is manipulating them, the Iraqi inspections chief said, clouding prospects of the high-stakes U.N. missions before they even resume.

The Iraqi warning by inspections chief Gen. Hussan Mohammed Amin -- made in the face of threatened U.S. military action -- raises the possibility that old problems would haunt any new U.N. inspections to ensure Iraq can no longer produce weapons of mass destruction.

In a letter Saturday, Iraq promised to behave "professionally" if U.N. weapons inspectors return to the country and gain access to Saddam Hussein's palaces and other suspect sites.

In the letter, sent to the Vienna headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Saddam adviser Gen. Amir al-Sadi said Baghdad sees no obstacles to a resumption of the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky told The Associated Press in Vienna,

That letter came a day after another letter from al-Sadi, this time to U.N. weapons inspectors, appeared to ignore details of agreements hammered out with the inspectors on their eventual return.

In Washington, the State Department expressed skepticism at the latest letter. "Iraq continues to want to play word games, not comply. They will continue to make contradictory promises, and then choose the version of most tactical benefit at any given moment," spokeswoman Jo-Anne Prokopowicz said Saturday.

Meanwhile, Iraq's parliament met in an emergency session Saturday, but said nothing about a resolution by the U.S. Congress giving President Bush authority to use force against Iraq. Instead, Iraq lawmakers condemned a resolution by Congress that recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Charges of Iraqi deception, and U.S. double-dealing, have dogged the inspections -- inaugurated in 1991 with volleys of Iraqi bullets over the heads of newly arrived inspectors, and ended in 1998 with punishing U.S.-British airstrikes the night thwarted inspectors finally withdrew.

Trying to stave off a new U.S. attack over what Washington says are covert weapon programs, Iraq has dropped objections to inspectors' return, and says it hopes to see an advance team back as soon as Oct. 19.

Asked if Iraq reserves the right to again revoke cooperation with inspectors, Baghad's inspections chief Amin told The Associated Press: "Of course."

"We gave commitments to cooperate, if they said they will follow scientific and logical measures for inspections, and will not misuse them for spying, collecting information," Amin said, speaking inside a walled industrial complex where Washington asserts nuclear weapons work could be under way.

If they will follow scientific measures, and they will take measures from the United Nations and not the United States, they should come on the date," he said.

The Bush Administration said that Iraq has never complied with inspectors.

"The world is done playing the Iraqi game of denial, deception and obfuscation. The Security Council needs to act to pass an effective new resolution that leads to Iraqi disarmament," an administration official said on condition of anonymity.

Iraqi Islamic leaders appealed to the Muslim world Saturday to come to their aid if the U.S. attacks.

"Take the word of Iraq, which already has lost so much flesh and blood to this country: If no one stops it, it will destroy the whole world!" Iraq's Popular Islamic Conference said in a fatwa, or religious edict, signed by 500 clerics of Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority and Sunni minority.

In the United Nations, Iraq's ambassador said in an interview that Saddam has changed since he lost the Gulf War 11 years ago and his country is now doing everything it can now to avert another conflict.

"War must be behind us, not before us," Mohammed al-Douri said. He spoke as the Bush administration pressed the U.N. Security Council to act to match the resolution passed by the U.S. Congress.

Al-Douri said the Iraqi leadership had changed its policies and tactics since it fought Iran in the 1980s, used chemical weapons against its Kurdish minority, invaded neighboring Kuwait in 1990 and lobbed Scud missiles at Israel and Saudi Arabia during the ensuing Gulf War.

"Ten or even 12 years is enough to judge the behavior of governments and the kind of relationship we now have with our neighbors. We think of how we can improve relationships, even with the United States," al-Douri said.

For the second time in three days, Iraqis threw open another U.S.-targeted site to Western and Iraqi camera crews and reporters. Iraqi generals called it proof of their eagerness to show the world Iraq is innocent of U.S. accusations.

Anti-aircraft guns, trenches and sandbags surrounded the Al-Furat site -- newly fortified against what Iraq fears will be imminent U.S. airstrikes, plant director Gen. Sa'adi Abbas Khudeir said.

Inside, bristling clusters of microphones and camera lenses recorded Iraqis working at computers.

Khudeir told journalists the workers were civilian and military researchers, laboring on peaceful electronics research and on weapons systems allowed by the United Nations.

"Believe me, no nukes, no physicists, no program -- just programs that serve the army, maintenance and development, that's all," he said, pointing to equipment.

For reporters with little technical knowledge, it was impossible to judge.

The Al Furat site, south of Baghdad, was one of the four sites that the United States suggested were being developed to produce nuclear weapons, although it admits conclusive evidence is lacking.

Al Furat has been the most closely scrutinized of the four. Washington alleges Iraqis have been caught trying to smuggle aluminum tubes into the complex -- parts the United States says could be used in a centrifuge to enrich uranium to weapons grade quality.

Iraq denies ever having a nuclear weapons program. U.N. authorities say they caught Iraq in the early 1990s with a nuclear arms program.

Iraq has remained under U.N. sanctions since the 1991 Gulf War. The United Nations says the sanctions cannot be lifted until inspectors verify that Iraq has no chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them.

In 1991, Iraqi soldiers fired into the air when one of the newly arriving inspection teams gave chase to a speeding convoy. Inspectors said they believed the trucks were carrying parts for uranium-enrichment devices.

Two months later, the IAEA charged that Iraqis had tried to hide radioactive material contained in nuclear fuel rods by driving it around in trucks when inspection teams visited.

Fitful squabbles and dustups followed in the ensuing years. Throughout, the United States and Britain and others complained that Iraq spoke of full cooperation while blocking access on the ground. Iraq contends the United States upheld the sanctions as a vendetta against Saddam.

In 1998, work broke down for good. Iraq declared all cooperation over. U.N. teams withdrew. That same evening, the United States and Britain led four nights of the most intense bombardment on Baghdad and other points in Iraq since the Gulf War.

In an interview with a German magazine Saturday, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan held out the prospect renewed inspections for the first time could include Saddam's dozen-plus palaces.

Asked about the palaces by Der Spiegel magazine, Ramadan said, "Our position is that the inspectors can seek and inspect however and where ever they would like to."

Sun, Oct 13 2002 10:29 AM AEST

ABC News online

Journalists tour suspect Iraq sites

Iraq has given foreign journalists a tour of a Baghdad factory the United States and Britain claim is part of Saddam Hussein's efforts to produce nuclear weapons.

The tour comes just 48 hours before a referendum on Saddam's leadership.

The al-Farat plant, west of Baghdad, was bombed by US war planes during the 1991 Gulf War.

But the Bush administration fears the complex could be used by Saddam Hussein's regime to enrich uranium.

During a tour of al-Farat by foreign journalists, the site's assistant director, Brigadier Samir Ibrahim, rejected claims it was part of Iraq's nuclear weapons program.

"There is nothing to do with the nuclear activities... material wise, or equipment wise, or even people working in this place," he said.

The tour of the factory comes as 11.5 million Iraqis prepare to cast their votes in Tuesday's presidential referendum.

They will be asked to vote yes or no to the question, do you agree that President Saddam Hussein serve a new seven-year term.

At the last referendum the Iraqi leader won 99.96 per cent of the vote.

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