Saddam's son recommends UN resolution

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s son told MPs today that Iraq should accept a UN resolution strengthening the mandate of international arms inspectors, but should require the inspection teams include Arabs.

“We have to agree to the UN Security Council resolution with limits on certain points, but not, we say, conditions,” Odai Saddam Hussein said in a letter distributed to parliament as it reconvened to consider the issue before making a recommendation to the president.

In the opening of the parliamentary session in Baghdad last night, members had sharply criticised the UN resolution.

“There should not be approval of the resolution without an Arab umbrella or, if this is not possible, then under the so-called Arab League and there should be Arab experts or technicians and monitors (on the inspection teams) who are familiar with the nuclear, chemical and biological side,” the president’s son said in his letter.

Odai Saddam Hussein, though, said acceptance would not be surrender.

"We have to know our enemy and that the UN resolution does not mean stopping him from committing military action.

“We also have to take precautions and measures and here we have to ask the Arab countries to immediately cut oil supplies to those countries that launch a military strike or aggression on Iraq and to any country that allows foreign war planes to use their airports or offer logistic support for them for refuelling,” his letter said.

Arab oil producers have ignored similar calls from Iraq in the past, saying stopping sales was not in their interest.

Odai, 38, Saddam’s eldest son, is feared in Iraq and has a history of brutality.

An assassination attempt in 1996 left him partially paralysed, prompting Saddam to focus on grooming his younger son, Qusai, to be Iraq’s next leader.

In 1995, Saddam briefly jailed Odai after he shot an uncle in the leg during an argument.