WASHINGTON, September 5 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter said Thursday, September 5, that Iraq poses no threat to the United States, that conservatives are abusing the U.S.-led war on terrorism and that the United States' reputation as a champion of human rights is at risk.

In a commentary for the Washington Post, Carter also said that the United Nations should lead action against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Carter said that "belligerent voices" now dominate the discussion of foreign affairs in Washington and that major changes are taking place "largely without definitive debates."

"Belligerent and divisive voices now seem to be dominant in Washington, but they do not yet reflect final decisions of the President, Congress or the courts," he said. "It is crucial that the historical and well-founded American commitments prevail: to peace, justice, human rights, the environment and international cooperation."

Some U.S. responses to major issues since the September 11 terror attacks "seem to be developing from a core group of conservatives who are trying to realize long-pent-up ambitions under the cover of the proclaimed war against terrorism," he warned.

Carter said that while Republican President George W. Bush has reserved judgment, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top administration officials point to "a devastating threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," vowing to topple Saddam Hussein with or without support from allies.

Carter, a Democrat who was president from 1977 to 1981, said the United States was "formerly admired almost universally as the preeminent champion of human rights," but has now "become the foremost target of respected international organizations concerned about these basic principles of democratic life."

U.S. authorities have "ignored or condoned abuses in nations that support our anti-terrorism effort, while detaining American citizens as 'enemy combatants,' incarcerating them secretly and indefinitely without their being charged with any crime or having the right to legal counsel," he said.

Detainees from the war in Afghanistan currently held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been left in an uncertain legal status that has drawn international criticism.

"These actions are similar to those of abusive regimes that historically have been condemned by American presidents," he wrote.

On Iraq, Carter wrote that Americans "are inundated almost daily with claims" from top government officials "that we face a devastating threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and with pledges to remove Saddam from office.”

Yet "there is no current danger to the United States from Baghdad," he said.

"In the face of intense monitoring and overwhelming American military superiority, any belligerent move by Hussein against a neighbor ... a tangible threat to use a weapon of mass destruction, or sharing this technology with terrorist organizations would be suicidal."

"We cannot ignore the development of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, but a unilateral war with Iraq is not the answer," Carter wrote, calling instead for "urgent" United Nations action "to force unrestricted inspections in Iraq."

"There is an urgent need for U.N. action to force unrestricted [weapons] inspections in Iraq. But perhaps deliberately so, this has become less likely as we alienate our necessary allies," Carter added.

Carter also blasted the U.S. withdrawal from several international agreements.

"Peremptory rejections of nuclear arms agreements, the biological weapons convention, environmental protection, anti-torture proposals, and punishment of war criminals have sometimes been combined with economic threats against those who might disagree with us," Carter wrote.

"These unilateral acts and assertions increasingly isolate the United States from the very nations needed to join in combating terrorism."

The former U.S. president also decried Bush's "abandoning any sponsorship of substantive negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis.

"Our apparent policy is to support almost every Israeli action in the occupied territories and to condemn and isolate the Palestinians as blanket targets of our war on terrorism, while Israeli settlements expand and Palestinian enclaves shrink," he lamented.

Carter criticized a statement by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "that in his lifetime 'there will be some sort of an entity that will be established'" to govern Palestinian territory, and Rumsfeld's reference to the "so-called occupation" of Palestinian land.