 |
|
Thousands in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and Australia demonstrated against a U.S. war on Iraq
|
CAIRO,
November 7 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Iraq's permanent
delegate to the Arab League, Mohssen Khalil, denounced Thursday,
November 7, a U.S. draft resolution on Iraq as "a draft to
announce war" against Baghdad.
He
was speaking to reporters after delivering a message to Arab League
Secretary General Amr Mussa from Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri.
"The
American administration announced it will take steps against Iraq,
either inside the framework of the U.N. Security Council, or outside
it," he said, quoted by Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"There
is no need to adopt a new Security Council resolution, since Iraq
announced it was ready to grant all facilities to the inspectors to
complete their mission," he added.
Khalil
said he had informed Mussa that his country would work for a return of
the inspectors as "early as possible."
The
United States pushed Wednesday, November 6, for a new tough draft
resolution to the U.N. Security Council that threatens the use force
against Iraq if it does not scrap its alleged weapons of mass
destruction.
French
Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said Thursday that many
clarifications were still needed about the draft.
"We
continue to ask for clarifications, notably on clauses automatically
authorizing the use of force," the foreign minister told Europe 1
radio.
"We
believe this text can still be improved. We want things to be as clear
as possible," he added.
The
new resolution, which the United States wants to see approved Friday,
November 8, opens the way to war and is "bound to fail".
Washington
has amended the text in response to demands from France and Russia
that it should not give the U.S. an automatic right to launch military
action if Iraq fails to comply.
Debate
was due to resume Thursday in New York on the text which Russia and
France say still contains "ambiguities".
In
what was probably the most important change, the draft put the
disputed words "Iraq has been and remains in material breach of
its obligations" into a new context.
France
and Russia said the words could be construed as saying the February
1991 ceasefire which ended the last Gulf War no longer holds, and the
United States was therefore free to attack Iraq, said AFP.
The
new draft said the Security Council would "afford Iraq a final
opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations" in spite
of previous breaches, but warned that if chief U.N. inspector Hans
Blix reported Iraq was obstructing the inspections, the Council would
convene immediately to consider the situation.
Blix
already told the Council he had some practical problems with the
draft, but said he intended to lead an advance party to Baghdad
"a week to 10 days after the adoption of the resolution."
French
President Jacques Chirac told Russian President Vladimir Putin he
hoped the resolution would be adopted unanimously, but said all risk
of the automatic use of force must be excluded.
"For
us the objective has to be to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass
destruction. It is not an E.U. objective to change the regime,"
the E.U.'s foreign policy envoy Javier Solana stressed in the European
parliament in Brussels.
For
his part, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Negroponte defended the
U.S. draft against continued accusations of a U.S. "hidden
trigger" which has been described by analysts as a plan to
control Middle East oil through a unilateral use of force against
Iraq.
"There
has been a lot of talk over the weeks of so-called ‘hidden
trigger’ - that somehow this resolution is intended to be used by
the United States as a pretext for the immediate use of force,"
Negroponte said, quoted by AFP.
"President
[George W.] Bush has said on repeated occasions that as far as he's
concerned, war would be a last resort and that he wants to give the
United Nations and the Security Council a chance."
However,
Bush has indeed threatened the unilateral use of force when he warned
he would not be handcuffed if the Council withheld approval for an
attack on Iraq, said AFP.
In
Baghdad, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz accused the United
States of seeking to carve up the Middle East.
"The
United States has declared Iraq as a target, but in reality all the
region is threatened with being broken up into several marginal
states," Aziz said, quoted by AFP.
Washington
wants to "plunge the region again into the colonial system of
long ago," he added.
Aziz
praised opposition to U.S. plans to strike Iraq, saying "time is
playing in favor of these forces, and demonstrators are expressing
themselves more and more in the capitals of the world, notably in the
United States, and rejecting this aggression."
A
leading Baghdad daily also urged Russia and France to oppose the U.S.
notorious darft.
"The
U.S. draft is full of hatred and concealed aggressiveness, it says
what we should do and what we should give, and, in any case, threatens
the use of force," said Babel.
"The
smell from the contents of the draft says that whatever we have given
and whatever we will give," in terms of disarmament, "the
result will remain the same, an aggression," the paper added.
"A
preliminary examination of this draft shows that it is bound to fail,
that it is an aggressive draft, its primary objective is to cancel out
our efforts, our cooperation and our suffering over the past 11 years.
"We
have great confidence that the just members of the Security Council,
such as Russia and France, will play their essential role to prevent
the Americans and the British from using the international
organization as a tool to achieve their aggressive goals," said Babel.
