JOHANNESBURG/JEDDAH, 3 September — Iraq, stepping up a diplomatic drive to avert a threatened US attack, said yesterday it would discuss a conditional return of United Nations arms inspectors with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Russia warned the United States that using force against Iraq could destabilize the region, Russian news agencies said.

Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said he would hold talks with Annan at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg today to discuss the deepening crisis with the United States. “We would consider this issue (the inspectors) within the context that I mentioned, with the comprehensive settlement,” Aziz told reporters. The UN inspectors left Baghdad in 1998.

The Gulf Cooperation Council foreign minister conference yesterday warned the United States against a military attack on Iraq. Omani Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Yussef ibn Alawi warned yesterday the United States risks plunging the world into chaos by attacking Iraq as the Gulf states met to review Washington’s threats to overthrow the Baghdad regime. “If the United States invades Iraq it will cause deep anti-American feeling and will provoke revenge and violence in Arab and Islamic countries,” Alawi said in an unusually hard-hitting speech at the opening session of a two-day meeting in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.

In Baghdad, President Saddam Hussein said US hostility masked an ambition to grab control of the region’s oil reserves. “Why all this American animosity against Iraq?” the official Iraqi News Agency quoted Saddam as saying. “Because America believes that if it destroys Iraq, it would control oil of the Middle East which makes up 65 percent of world oil reserves.”

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov yesterday raised the specter of a Moscow veto in the UN Security Council over strikes on Iraq as he again warned Washington against launching a military assault to unseat Saddam’s regime. Flanked by Iraqi counterpart Naji Sabri following 15-minute one-on-one talks in Moscow’s Foreign Ministry guests’ mansion, Russia’s top diplomat accused Washington of harboring political motives for ousting Saddam.

He said Bush’s administration had provided no evidence to back up claims that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction. Sabri was visiting Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council with veto power, as part of Iraqi efforts to fend off US threats of military action to topple Saddam. Ivanov, whose country backs the US “war on terror”, but has long had good ties with Baghdad, said he hoped the Council would never be asked to authorize a strike on Iraq “and, therefore, the right of veto will not be necessary”.

Former President Nelson Mandela of South Africa told reporters he was “appalled” by United States policy on Iraq. “What they are introducing is chaos in international affairs and we condemn that in the strongest terms,” he said.

Iraq is pulling out the diplomatic stops to counter US threats to remove Saddam by force for his alleged efforts to acquire doomsday weapons that Washington says Iraq might use against the West or its allies, or hand over to terrorists.

“We will dispatch envoys to all countries in the world ... to explain our position and rally them against the aggression,” Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan, who sought support in Lebanon and Syria last week, declared in Baghdad yesterday. The Bush administration has sought to portray its quarrel with Baghdad as part of the “war on global terror”. (The Independent)