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Rejects US Draft Of UN Resolution
10-16-2
| (AFP) -- President Saddam Hussein won 100 percent of the
vote in a referendum giving him another seven-year term as Russia said
a US draft UN resolution on Iraq that would call for the automatic use
of force was "unacceptable." "The US draft resolution on Iraq has not undergone any changes. It remains unacceptable, and Russia will not support it," Deputy Foreign Minister Yury Fedotov was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency. His comments came ahead of the first UN Security Council debate on the Iraq crisis. Meanwhile in Baghdad Iraq's number two and head of the committee supervising the plebiscite, Ezzat Ibrahim told a news conference: "The president, leader Saddam Hussein, God preserve him, has won 100 percent of the vote." The results were predictable, Saddam being the sole candidate. A total of "11,445,638 voters" said yes to Saddam, a 100 percent turnout, said Ibrahim, who is deputy chairman of the ruling Revolution Command Council. The result of Tuesday's vote on a 100 percent turnout "surpasses the most advanced forms of democratic exercise in countries hostile to Iraq," said Ibrahim, referring to the United States which is threatening to attack Baghdad to oust Saddam. The ruling Baath Party had targeted a 100 percent "yes" vote this time and created a party mood in defiance of US plans to topple the regime. "Yes to Saddam Hussein as eternal leader," headlined the party's mouthpiece Ath-Thawra Wednesday. "The Iraqis chose light and faith rather than darkness, civilization rather than barbarity, victory rather than defeat," Ibrahim said, hailing their "courageous and sacred yes" to Saddam. "Today, you are stepping from the stage of revolutionary legitimacy ... to that of constitutional legitimacy," he told Iraqis of the outcome of the referendum, in which Saddam was the sole candidate. The 65-year-old president garnered 99.96 percent of the vote in Iraq's first referendum in 1995. Earlier as polling was underway White House spokesman Ari Fleischer called it "obviously, not a very serious day, not a very serious vote. Nobody places any credibility on it." The British government also dismissed the vote in a statement from the Foreign Office. The US Central Command said allied warplanes bombed a communications facility about 160 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of Baghdad in response to a surge in provocative Iraqi challenges to British and US aircraft enforcing no-fly zones in Iraq. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said France, which opposes a US-British plan for a single resolution demanding Iraq disarm under threat of force, had tabled new ideas to break the impasse over UN action. "We will be responding to those ideas, and we'll see how things unfold," Powell said during a break in talks with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. "The negotiations are intense, but they are continuing, and I'm hopeful that we will find a solution." French President Jacques Chirac said in an interview published Wednesday he knew of no relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda and warned that a war on Baghdad could provoke terrorists to stage new attacks. Speaking to Lebanon's L'Orient Le Jour newspaper ahead of a visit to Beirut, Chirac said: "To my knowledge, no proof has been found, or in any case officially made public, of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. "Even if some terrorists have found refuge in Iraq, you mustn't mix up issues," he said, adding that "the main aim of the international community concerning Iraq must be disarmament." Chirac's comment challenged statements from US President George W. Bush, who has tried to give the impression that al-Qaeda, which Washington blames for the September 11, 2001 attacks, and Iraq are linked. Chirac said that an attack on Iraq might also have repercussions for what the United States terms a worldwide "war on terror". "We cannot exclude terrorist groups using the Iraqi matter as a pretext for new actions and as a basis for propaganda," he said. The president said the feeling of injustice shared by many Arabs watching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could widen if Iraq was also brought into the fray. "Our responsibility is to look after stability in the Middle East. With the Iraqi crisis, it's the whole region that is threatened," he said in the interview. Washington, convinced of Saddam's development and stockpiling of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, holds firm to a single resolution to ensure unfettered access to Iraqi sites. Despite diplomatic reassurances, Paris and Washington continued to lock horns over the UN resolution, continuing deadlock among the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. China has expressed disquiet over US calls for military action and wants a political solution to the crisis. But it has not come down with a firm stance on what kind of resolution it wants. UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix was due later to brief the Security Council for the second time in a month. The Bush administration has blocked the return of Blix's inspectors until the new resolution is passed even though Baghdad has said they can resume their work, halted since 1998. Bush also was forced to counter concerns, expressed notably in the British press in the wake of the devastating bomb attack in Bali, that Iraq is diverting attention from the US-led war on terrorism. "We will fight if need be the war on terror on two fronts. We've got plenty of capacity to do so," he declared, adding, "Iraq is a part of the war on terror." Copyright © 2002 AFP. All rights reserved. All information displayed in this section (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the contents of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presses. |
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