Iraq's official press this morning accused President George W Bush of deliberately lying to the United Nations to win support for a US war on Baghdad.
Mr Bush's speech Thursday was "nothing but a dangerous chapter in a perfidious US game intended to deceive and manoeuvre to achieve its aggressive aims under the cover of the Security Council," said Al-Qadissiya.
Washington "does not respect the Security Council and attaches little importance to international law," the newspaper charged.
The daily said Bush had been "forced to make his speech to the UN," because of growing world opposition to his plans to attack Iraq.
"The evil and lying speech of Bush is just the product of the sick mind of an administration which takes pleasure in living in a bloodbath and breathing in gun smoke," said the influential tabloid Babel.
"Bush and the world must understand that Iraq cannot think about producing weapons of mass destruction or using them because it does not possess any," said the daily run by President Saddam Hussein's elder son Uday.
"Bush, through his lies, has sought to win UN cover," to launch an attack on Iraq), but he has failed."
The government's Al-Jumhuriya newspaper said: "Bush junior said nothing new in his lie-filled speech to the UN General Assembly, which led him to trot out the same false allegations and lying accusations to incite the world against Iraq."
AFP