Saddam denies he has weapons of mass destruction

Saddam Hussein, in an interview broadcast on Channel 4 tonight, said that Iraq does not have a relationship with al-Qaida and reiterated that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction.

“If we had a relationship with al-Qaida, and we believed in that relationship, we wouldn’t be ashamed to admit it,” the Iraqi leader said in the TV interview with a former Labour MP, Tony Benn.

The interview was conducted on Sunday in Baghdad for a new television network called Arab Television, a yet-to-be-launched Arab TV station with administrative offices in London.

It was broadcast a day before US Secretary of State Colin Powell is set to present evidence at the UN Security Council that Iraq has hidden large caches of weapons of mass destruction from international inspectors and defied calls on it to disarm.

Sitting on a gilded chair at a round table next to a white, black and red Iraqi flag with a green star, Saddam spoke in a carefully controlled voice.

He denied that Iraq has any weapons of mass destruction and said the United States was looking for a pretext to launch a war against his regime. But he said Iraq does not want a confrontation.

“Iraq has no interest in war. No Iraqi official or ordinary citizens have expressed a wish to go to war,” he said.

Saddam said his international opponents were trying to justify war and that he had no objections to making sure Iraq was free of weapons of mass destruction.

“These weapons do not come in small pills that you can hide in your pocket. These are weapons of mass destruction and it is easy to work out if Iraq has them or not,” he said.

Saddam said Iraq wanted UN inspections to succeed to prove that it does not have weapons of mass destruction.

“It is in our interests to help them (inspectors) reach the truth,” Saddam said. “The question is whether the other side wants to reach the truth or whether it wants to find a pretext for aggression.”

The UN inspections resumed in November, after a four year gap, to search for any weapons of mass destruction. During the 1990s, previous UN teams oversaw destruction of the great bulk of such weapons and their production programs in Iraq, under UN resolutions adopted after Iraq’s defeat in the 1991 Gulf War.

In the interview, Saddam said the United States aims to take over Iraq’s oil supplies in a bid to “control the world” so it can dictate to other powers, including China, Russia and Europe.

“If you want to control the world, you must control oil, and one of the most important requirements for controlling oil is to destroy Iraq,” he said. “One of the main reasons for the aggression that the American administration is engaged in is to control the world.”

Saddam also claimed the United States was acting under the influence of Israel.

“The consecutive American administrations were led to a path of hostility against the people of this region, including our own nation,” he said.

Saddam said the United States had no right to act alone and should work with other nations to solve international problems.

Saddam said he did not think it was wise for any leader – even one with the power of the United States – to try to ”do without the rest of the world.”

“If this person chooses to stay on this planet and ignore the rest of the world, then the least we can say is that this person is lacking in wisdom,” he added.