- AMMAN, Jordan (Reuters) -
Iraq called on Arabs Tuesday to strike U.S. interests in the Middle East
if Washington attacked Baghdad, and the foreign minister denied his country
was trying to produce nuclear bombs.
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- As President Bush prepared to present his case for ousting
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to the United Nations, Iraq portrayed Washington
as the aggressor and said the United States and Britain were spreading
lies about Iraq's capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction.
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- British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Washington's most
outspoken ally, was expected to defend his hawkish policy on Iraq in a
speech to trade union leaders who, like many in his own Labor Party, want
proof of Saddam's aggressive intentions.
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- European Commission President Romano Prodi joined other
European leaders in warning Bush that launching a military attack on Iraq
without the backing of the U.N. Security Council could destroy his global
anti-terror alliance.
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- Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan said U.S. and
British claims that Iraq was rebuilding its banned weapons programs were
lies, and reiterated the Iraqi position that U.N. weapons inspectors could
return to Iraq only as part of a comprehensive deal with the United Nations.
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- "We call for confronting the aggression and aggressors
not only by the Iraqi capability but we call on all the Arab masses ...
to confront the material and human interests of the aggressors ...,"
Ramadan told a news conference in Amman.
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- "Iraq has a religious right to defend itself and...all
Arab citizens wherever they might be have the right to fight by all available
means the aggression through its representatives on their land," he
said.
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- NO WEAPONS
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- "The West, and Britain and America in particular,
are used to lying," Ramadan said. "We don't deny (these reports)
or otherwise, we say the truth is that there are no weapons of mass destruction."
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- The London-based International Institute for Strategic
Studies said Monday that Iraq could build a nuclear bomb soon if it acquired
enriched uranium with foreign help, but that its ability to use other weapons
of mass destruction had dwindled.
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- Ramadan said any country could be said to be able to
build a nuclear weapon with foreign help -- even a poor country like Mauritania.
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- Iraq has matched the efforts of Bush aides, who are trying
to persuade Congress and world leaders that Saddam poses a major threat,
with its own drive to show that it is the victim of Western "warmongers."
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- The foreign ministry has taken reporters to a former
nuclear facility at Tuweitha which it says is now used for medical and
agricultural research.
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- Foreign Minister Naji Sabri told CNN in an interview
late on Monday "... there is no physical existence of anything that
is now being promoted by warmongers in Washington and the single warmonger
in London who is Mr. Tony Blair.
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- "It is not only that Iraq has not the material (for
a nuclear bomb) but Iraq has no intention in the first place," he
said.
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- In an interview with the Egyptian daily al-Ahram, he
said a U.S. attack would be "not a threat to Iraq, it is a threat
to security and stability in the world, the world order and the United
Nations."
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- In Britain, Blair's spokesman said the prime minister
would launch a personal attack on Saddam in his speech to skeptical trade
unionists holding their annual conference in Blackpool, branding him an
"international outlaw."
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- But other members of the U.N. Security Council, lobbied
for support by Bush in recent days, have shown no appetite for a military
assault on a sovereign state without clear backing from the international
community.
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- Prodi told independent TSF radio, "We should fight
terrorism, but I don't think that a war is a solution without the backing
of the U.N. Security Council."
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- "Otherwise I fear that the greatest achievement
of all will be destroyed, the keystone of U.S. diplomacy after September
11, which is the global anti-terrorist alliance," he said.
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- Vice President Dick Cheney said in a television interview
Monday that it would be "virtually impossible" to assemble an
international coalition against Iraq if Saddam did get hold of nuclear
weapons.
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- Time was not on the side of the United States in its
efforts to prevent Iraq acquiring such weapons, he said.
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- But French President Jacques Chirac said in an interview
on Monday he would like the U.N. Security Council to consider one resolution
giving Iraq three weeks to admit U.N. weapons inspectors, and a second
on possible military action if Baghdad refused.
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