Iraq today implicitly renewed its refusal to readmit UN arms inspectors and said international monitoring of weapons programs was only acceptable if applied to all countries of the region, including Israel.
"Any ... monitoring of Iraq's installations should be within the framework of overall monitoring of all countries of the region, chiefly the Zionist enemy," Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan told the opening session of an Arab conference.
"As to talk of the return of UN inspectors, the search for and dismantling of Iraq's weapons was completed by the Special Commission and the spy teams affiliated to it," he said, two days after Baghdad held talks with UN secretary general Mr Kofi Annan on the inspectors' possible return.
Their return would be aimed at "spying and contriving crises" that would lead to "fresh US and British attacks" on the country, said Mr Ramadan.
But the United States, which has branded Iraq part of an "axis of evil," would "only reap humiliation and defeat" if it carried out a "foolish aggression" against Baghdad, he warned.
"The US administration of evil continues to opt for threats, aggression and feverish attempts to change the independent nationalist regime in Iraq by subsidising agents and setting up terror camps for them," Mr Ramadan said.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Mr Naji Sabri held what he described as "constructive" talks with Mr Annan on Thursday on the possible return of UN inspectors, who have been barred from Iraq since pulling out on the eve of a December 1998 US-British bombing blitz.
The talks, the first high-level encounter between the two sides in a year, were held to the backdrop of US threats to take military action against Iraq unless it allowed the inspectors back to check that it no longer has weapons of mass destruction.
Mr Sabri and Mr Annan agreed to meet again in mid-April
AFP