No need to inspect, Iraq says

THERE was no need for UN inspectors to return to Iraq, the country’s information minister said yesterday, insisting that claims Baghdad still possessed weapons of mass destruction were a lie.

Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf said that US President George W. Bush was “standing in quicksand” when it came to Iraq.

And he dismissed the Iraqi opposition leaders who recently held talks in London and Washington as “bats ... and a bad American product”.

Mr al-Sahhaf’s remarks came amid speculation that the US was to launch a military campaign to remove President Saddam Hussein and Iraqi efforts to convince the world it was a victim of US lies.

“The work within the UN concerning (prohibited weapons) in Iraq, this work has been achieved. They say that it has not been achieved. They claim something remains. This talk can be responded to and disproved,” Mr al-Sahhaf said.

“This is a lie. This is an American stance,” he said of Washington’s insistence that Iraq still possessed weapons of mass destruction.

“Inspections have finished in Iraq.”

It was not clear from Mr al-Sahhaf’s remarks whether Iraq was shutting the inspectors out for good.

Baghdad has sent mixed signals about whether it will act on an invitation to meet UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix in Iraq to resolve disarmament issues.

The inspector’s return is a key demand of the UN Security Council.

The US has dismissed the invitation to meet Blix as a ploy and accused Iraq of trying to rebuild its weapons programmes and of supporting terrorism.

Bush, who has called for President Hussein’s removal, has threatened unspecified consequences if inspectors are not allowed to return.

US officials are talking openly about a new war with Iraq. On Saturday, President Bush said President Hussein remained “an enemy until proven otherwise”.

“(Bush) appeared before the world to disseminate domestic propaganda ... at a time when he knows that he is standing in quicksand when it comes to his baseless talk on Iraq,” Mr al-Sahhaf said.

Under UN Security Council resolutions, sanctions imposed after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, which led to the Gulf War, cannot be lifted until UN inspectors certify Iraq’s biological, chemical and nuclear weapons have been destroyed, along with the long-range missiles to deliver them.

UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998, and Baghdad has barred them from returning.

Baghdad has insisted the council replies to 19 political and technical questions it posed in March.