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Iraqi Newspaper Attacks New U.S. Decision
BAGHDAD, Feb 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - An Iraqi newspaper attacked the new U.S. administration of President George W. Bush on Saturday, saying it had a "great hatred" of Iraq, news agencies reported.
"Leaders of the new American administration, particularly George W. Bush, are adopting a hostile policy against Iraq and they bear a great hatred for its people," the official al-Iraq newspaper said.
Interviewed two days before his inauguration as president, Bush called Iraqi President Saddam Hussein "a wild card" who could destabilize the world's oil supplies.
Asked if he would use military force against the Iraqi leader, Bush replied, "If he crosses the line, the answer's yes. If we catch him developing weapons of mass destruction, the answer's yes."
Bush's administration has given Iraqi opposition groups permission to resume activities inside Iraq with American funding, marking the first substantial move by the Bush White House to confront Saddam Hussein.
U.S. officials said recently that Washington had cleared the way for $4 million to be given to Iraqi opposition groups for gathering information relating to what the U.S. says is Iraqi war crimes, military operations and other internal developments inside Iraq in their struggle against the regime.
Some of the money has already been used by the London-based Iraq National Congress (INC) for logistics and training outside Iraq, the Washington Post reported this week.
The funds were agreed to, and announced, in Clinton's administration last October, but formally cleared for payment by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control this week.
"This decision is laughable," said Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan.
The decision to renew U.S.-funded efforts inside Iraq was announced publicly by Ahmed Chalabi, a founding member of the INC, as "a major reversal" of U.S. policy.
"For the first time ever, the INC has public U.S. funding to operate in Iraq, and for the first time since 1996, there's U.S. support for operating inside Iraq," he said.
Chalabi said a wide range of anti-government activities are permitted under the license granted this week. "What we want to do is bring out political information, information on the state of Iraq's military and enhance our contacts with our constituency inside Iraq," he said.
The INC is still looking for at least two more licenses that would allow it to broaden efforts further. One application, pending before the Treasury Department, would permit the group to use American funds to open a permanent office in northern Iraq, where it could publish a newspaper and collect intelligence.
A second application that has yet to be filed would allow the INC to tap another $12 million in approved American funding to distribute food, medicine and other forms of humanitarian relief inside government-controlled areas of Iraq, news agencies reported.
The Washington Post quoted unnamed U.S. State Department officials as saying that in releasing the funds, the new administration had "moved beyond the policy of the Clinton administration".
But State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that the move was not a senior level decision, and did not indicate a significant shift in policy, which remains under review.
He said: "I know everybody is looking for new and different policies, particularly on a subject as important to all of us as Iraq."
On Saturday, the Iraqi vice president told reporters, "We pay no attention to such actions, which only go to confirm our conviction that there is no difference between Republican or Democratic administrations. I'm sure there isn't a single Iraqi who doesn't mock such a decision."
The Iraqi newspaper also attacked U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War of 1991, for accusing Iraq of still possessing weapons of mass destruction.
Powell said that the international community and the United Nations must hold Iraq to its commitment to abandon weapons of mass destruction, as it promised at the end of the Gulf War.
Powell, who led U.S. armed forces during Desert Storm, said Iraq is a "problem for its own people".
The Iraqi paper replied: "Since he has assumed his new post, Powell has issued a series of baseless accusations and threats against Iraq but nobody takes them seriously."
U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq more than two years ago and Iraq has refused to let them back under a new system.
Both the U.K. and the U.S. insist that Iraq must allow U.N. weapons inspectors back into the country and meet other conditions before economic sanctions on the country can be lifted.
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