PARIS/AMMAN, 11 September — Iraq called on Arabs yesterday to strike US interests in the Middle East if Washington attacked Baghdad while Saudi Arabia called for UN involvement in any attempt to resolve the crisis over Iraq.
"Our positions are very close. We both believe that a solution must come by means of the United Nations, and of course Iraq must implement UN resolutions," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said after a meeting with French President Jacques Chirac. "Iraq is an important country in the region and the fear linked to any military action is that the territorial integrity of Iraq would suffer," he said. "This is not against the policy of the United States because they affirm at every opportunity that they are anxious to preserve Iraq’s territorial integrity," he said. Prince Saud was passing through Paris on way to attend the UN General Assembly in New York.
Chirac’s spokeswoman, Catherine Colonna, reiterated the French president’s view — expressed in an interview with the New York Times Monday — that Iraq should be given a last chance to accept UN weapons inspectors.
As US President George W. Bush prepared to present his case for ousting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to the United Nations, Iraq portrayed Washington as the aggressor.
Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said US and British claims that Iraq was rebuilding its banned weapons programs were lies. "Iraq has a religious right to defend itself and...all Arab citizens wherever they might be have the right to fight by all available means the aggression," Ramadan said at a news conference in Amman.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Washington’s most outspoken ally, told trade union leaders Saddam was an "international outlaw" whose "barbaric regime" posed a threat that must be dealt with before it engulfed the world.
Blair’s zeal for action against Iraq is not shared by other European leaders, and European Commission President Romano Prodi was the latest to make this clear, warning Bush that launching an attack on Iraq without UN Security Council backing could destroy his global anti-terror alliance.
