Rice: No trade-off in US weapons deals

US President George Bush’s administration said there is no trade-off in its plans to sell billions in sophisticated weaponry to oil-rich Persian Gulf states whose cooperation Washington is courting in Iraq.

“There isn’t an issue of quid pro quo,” US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said of the proposed sales to Saudi Arabia and other nations that have until recently committed little other than rhetoric to the US-backed democratic experiment in Iraq.