Iraq renews readiness to receive UN inspectors
Iraq, Politics, 10/21/2002

Iraq on Sunday renewed its readiness to receive the UN inspectors in order to resume their work in implementation of the agreement concluded with the UN without the need to issue a new resolution by the UN Security Council.

A new resolution on disarming Iraq will be presented to the United Nations Security Council "early this week," Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday.

Speaking on NBC's Meet the Press TV program, Powell said any resolution on the issue must document Iraqi violations of U.N. resolutions, must establish a "strong new inspection regime" and must talk about the consequences of noncompliance. "If Saddam once again frustrates the inspection regime and makes it clear that he is not going to cooperate, I think that is a matter of the utmost gravity. And the President has said clearly that if in that instance the United Nations will not act, then the United States, with other like-minded nations, will act," Powell said.

Asked whether the United States would press for regime change in Iraq if inspections proceed, Powell said "All we are interested in is getting rid of those weapons of mass destruction. We think the Iraqi people would be a lot better off with a different leader, a different regime, but the principal offense here are weapons of mass destruction, and that's what this resolution is working on.... If the inspectors do their job and we can satisfy the world community that they are disarmed, that's one path. If we can't satisfy the world community that they are disarmed, that takes us down another path." The Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said in statements quoted by the Iraqi press Iraq's position to accepting the return of the UN inspectors according to the agreement reached with the UN and that there is no need to issue a resolution by the UN security council regarding that.

"Saddam Hussein is harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror, the instruments of mass death and destruction, and he cannot be trusted," Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said last week. "The risk is simply too great that he will use them or provide them to a terror network." Expressing his own view, Wolfowitz said the only hope of achieving "the peaceful disarmament of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction is by having a credible threat of force behind our diplomacy. To be effective, the two must be part of a single policy." If peaceful disarmament of Iraq is not achievable, the deputy defense secretary said, the United States will not act unilaterally. "Indeed, we have already begun to assemble an impressive coalition," he said, with some nations indicating that "they will be with us, with or without a U.N. resolution, and many others will surely join once there is one."

Ramadan added that Iraq is ready to foil any "evil American aggression aiming at undermining its national sovereignty and people's will."

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