VIENNA,
August 1 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A former U.N. assistant
secretary general and humanitarian coordinator for Iraq said Thursday,
August 1, a fresh United States attack on Iraq "is in no way
justified," in an interview with Austrian public radio.
"Such
a pre-emptive strike is against international law, and I do not think
Washington will get a mandate from the United Nations Security Council
for it," said Hans Von Sponeck, news agencies reported.
"A
decision to wage war may have been made on paper, but it is not clear
what the U.S. strategy will be should Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
fall," he added.
Von
Sponeck, who resigned his post in 2000 to protest U.N. sanctions on
Iraq, warned that Baghdad should receive guarantees that weapons
inspectors in the country "should not again be used for espionage
tactics."
"It
is no secret anymore that U.N. observers, who should have been
neutral, were used by American and British secret services," he
said.
The
German diplomat rapped U.S. foreign policymakers, saying that in
Washington "no one apart from U.S. Secretary of State Colin
Powell understands the situation in the Middle East."
Meanwhile,
former head of the U.N. weapon inspectors, Rolf Ekéus, accused the
United States Thursday of using the weapon inspections for its own
espionage activities, the German newspaper Der Spiegel Online
reported.
And
on Monday, July 29, the Stockholm newspaper Svenska Dagbladet
quoted the Swedish diplomat as accusing the U.S. government of - among
other things - "infiltration" from two agents to collect
material over the places of residence of Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein.
