World

Iraq Rejects New U.N. Inspectors

February 10, 2000 / 10:12 AM EST / AP

Iraq will not allow a U.N. weapons inspection team into the country to restart disarmament activities, a top Iraqi leader said Thursday.

"There shall be no return of the so-called inspection teams. We reject the infiltration (of our country) by spies using such cover," the official Iraqi News Agency quoted Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan as telling a visiting Russian envoy.

The remarks are the most negative by an Iraqi leader regarding the Dec. 17 U.N. Security Council resolution, and come as the newly appointed chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix of Sweden, is trying to set up the new disarmament commission. Ramadan did not mention Blix by name, but his team was set up under the resolution.

Iraqi leaders have repeatedly said they will not deal with the resolution, but have stopped short of formally notifying the United Nations of their stand.

The resolution demands a resumption of the U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq that were suspended on the eve of U.S. and British airstrikes in late 1998.

Russia, perceived here as Iraq's closest ally on the Security Council, has dispatched Nikolai Kartuzov, Russia's ambassador-at-large, to Iraq to try to persuade the government to cooperate, Baghdad-based diplomats said.

But Ramadan told Kartuzov that Iraq "is not committed to Resolution 1284 and is not under obligation" to implement it, INA said.

"It is a resolution which the United States has drafted to realize its aggressive intentions against Iraq," Ramadan was quoted as saying.

Kartuzov arrived in Baghdad early this week and has met with other senior Iraqi leaders, among them Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.

State-run newspapers Thursday quoted Aziz as telling Kartuzov that Iraq will not cooperate with the United Nations to implement the resolution.

"The resolution is a bad rewrite of previous Security Council resolutions which reflect the failure of the council to implement its commitments toward Iraq," the al-Thawra newspaper of the ruling Baath party quoted Aziz as saying.

Iraq says it has no more banned weapons and is demanding a complete lifting of U.N. sanctions, imposed for Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, as a condition for the return of the inspectors.

Aziz said last week his government might be willing to cooperate if the United Nations made the resolution palatable to Iraq. He did not elaborate.