Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan has called on Arabs to strike US interests in the Middle East if Washington attacked Baghdad.
Mr Ramadan described as lies US and British claims that Iraq was rebuilding its banned weapons programme and reiterated weapons inspectors could only be allowed back in Iraq as part of a comprehensive solution with the United Nations.
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Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan at a news conference in Amman Photograph: Reuters
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"We call for confronting the aggression and aggressors not only by the Iraqi capability but we call on all the Arab masses . . . to confront the material and human interests of the aggressors wherever they are found," Mr Ramadan said in Amman.
"Iraq has a religious right to defend itself and this being the case all Arab citizens wherever they might be have the right to fight by all available means the aggression through its representatives on their land," he said.
Mr Ramadan was delivering a message from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to Jordan's King Abdullah. He said the message focused on US threats against Iraq and was part of Baghdad's diplomatic campaign to rally Arab opposition against any military action against Iraq.
The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said Iraq could build a nuclear bomb soon if it acquired enriched uranium with foreign help, although its ability to use other weapons of mass destruction has dwindled.
Mr Ramadan said any country could be said to be able to build a nuclear weapon with foreign help. "The same point could be made even of a poor country like Mauritania for example," he said.