Hentet på netiran.com.

1.marts 1998

BAGHDAD, IRAQ Iraq dismissed yesterday as "unnecessary" a UN draft resolution warning it to comply with a deal to open up its presidential sites to weapons inspectors. Oil Minister Amir Muhammad Rasheed said the British draft resolution, which sets out severe consequences if Baghdad obstructs inspections, was redundant because the deal clinched by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was a cast iron accord.

"We feel (it is) totally unnecessary to have any Security Council Resolution to support the memorandum of understanding which we have reached," said Rasheed, a top Iraqi negotiator with UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspectors "It has the power of law. It does not need any endorsement," Rasheed told a news conference in Baghdad.

Annan sealed a last minute accord with Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz on Monday to defuse a row over access to eight presidential sites, where UN weapons inspectors believe Iraq could be hiding prohibited weapons materials. The agreement averted threatened US-led military strikes on Iraq. Although the United States has welcomed the agreement, it has maintained its beefed-up forces in the Persian Gulf region. Rasheed pledged that Iraq was ready to work with the inspectors and said their access to the sites, accompanied by diplomats, would show up the "fallacies" of US and British charges they were used to conceal secret weapons programs. "We have agreed to open them up to international experts so we can prove this was a fallacy like other fallacies which the American administration has claimed," Rasheed said. He said Iraq had "no personal feelings" against UNSCOM Chief Richard Butler, whose recent comments about Iraq's biological weapons potential infuriated government officials, and would welcome him to Baghdad early in March for talks. But he warned of "problems" unless UNSCOM inspectors carried out their tasks in line with UN resolutions.

"The condition is very simple UNSCOM has to behave according to UN standards," he said. "When they yield to pressure from some sources in the American administration... we will have problems." No date has been set for visits to the presidential sites by the inspectors, who have been continuing their regular inspections and monitoring work.