CAIRO, 5 September — Arab foreign ministers yesterday called for new talks on the return of UN arms inspectors to Baghdad to avert a US war on Iraq. "We insist on deploying quick efforts to avoid a strike and to find a solution through dialogue with the United Nations," Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said at the opening of a two-day meeting of the ministers here.
Such a dialogue should be aimed at getting Iraq to readmit arms inspectors who fled four years ago, and eventually at lifting 12 years of UN trade sanctions and ensuring Iraq remains one country, he added.
The Arab leaders have expressed fears that Iraq might break apart into Shiite Muslim, Sunni Muslim and Kurdish states, spreading instability to nearby Gulf countries as well as Syria and Turkey where there are Kurdish minorities.
Moussa was echoing remarks from the opening speech by Lebanese Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hamoud, the meeting chairman, who said "any aggression, any threat against any Arab state is a threat to all Arab states." "And we have to take a clear and strong Arab position, and send a clear and united message in this regard," Hamoud said.
UN resolutions adopted since Iraq’s ill-fated 1990 invasion of its neighbor, Kuwait, call for Baghdad to dismantle programs for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in return for a lifting of the sanctions. But US President George W. Bush has now been calling for the overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, whom he accuses of further developing weapons of mass destruction. Some delegates said Iraq could only hope to avoid an attack by readmitting UN weapons inspectors.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri charged that Bush will present "lies" in seeking the approval of the US Congress and United Nations for a military strike against his country. "Mr. Bush cannot provide to his people one (piece of) evidence that Iraq poses a threat to US interests," Sabri told reporters on the sidelines of the meeting.
"All these are pretexts to support his evil plans which will not serve any interests of anybody in the world, not even the United States, these are whims, lies and false pretexts with no evidence at all," he said.
While six Gulf Arab states rejected a US strike against Iraq during a meeting on Tuesday, they also urged Baghdad to readmit UN weapons inspectors to ward off an attack.
During the closed-door meeting, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shara said Washington was trying to torpedo an Arab initiative for peace with Israel. "There is confusion about the fate of the Arab peace initiative and the United States, instead of supporting this initiative, has hardened its tone toward certain Arab countries," Shara was quoted as saying by a delegate. "It’s a strange thing in the history of international relations," he was quoted as saying.
During a March summit in Beirut, Arab leaders adopted a Saudi initiative offering Israel normal ties with the Arabs in return for its pullout from all land seized in the 1967 war, and allowing for an independent Palestinian state. Israel rejected the plan, though the United States welcomed it.
