Soccer diplomacy between Iraq and the US
The Iraqi Football Union said it received an invitation from its American counterpart to participate in soccer matches in the U.S.A.
A spokesman for the Iraqi National Olympic Committee said a quarter of the matches' revenue would be put into a special fund under the control of UNICEF to be spent on sick children. This invitation is the first of its sort since the Iraqi invasion against Kuwait in 1990.
This comes as Iraq announced the death of two persons and the injury of a third due to raids by British and American aircraft on Mosul, northern Iraq.
The Iraqi government regarded the US declaration of the international halting of the raids is just playing with words aimed at continuing of American and British penetration of the Iraqi airspace without Iraq defending its national sovereignty.
"He who kills the people of Iraq on a daily basis, destroys their civilian and service installations and demolish their houses, could in no way be trust- or creditworthy. Hence, we will continue with resistance and confrontation, since we are defending our land and skies. As for the aggressors, they will have no alternative other than canceling what they call no-fly zones and parallels drawn by their sick minds and dreams," INA quoted the spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Information and Culture as saying.
He on Sunday warned that Iraq did not and will no longer tolerate the state of affairs they want, nor will it allow the overt game of what they term temporary suspension (of sorties) to pass. The spokesman was commenting on statements made at a news conference by U.S Defence Department (Pentagon) spokesman Kenneth Beacon. He described these statements as mere play on words intended to sustain U.S-British violations of Iraqi airspace, with no Iraqi resistance, thereby suggesting the misconception that Iraq accepts such state of affairs, i.e., it tacitly approves of the two no-fly zones, which is what they specifically wanted.
The official newspaper, al-Thawra, asked UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to work to halt these raids.