The Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has described as "a joke" US and British claims about Baghdad's alleged weapons of mass destruction, the official Iraqi News Agency (INA) said.
"The Americans and the British...say if Iraq was left alone it would produce this and that kind of weapons and it would put its production in the service of terrorism," INA quoted Saddam as saying.
"Such talk is more like a joke, but in reality they mean harm," Saddam was quoted as telling head of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission and a group of engineers and technicians.
"They mean to prevent any Arab or Muslim people from achieving development...and this is the wicked course of the West and in particular of America, which is backed by Zionism," Saddam said.
Iraq has not allowed the arms experts to return since they left on the eve of a US-British bombing raid in December 1998 aimed at punishing Baghdad for not cooperating.
Iraq's Foreign Minister Naji Sabri accused the United States on Monday of wanting the arms inspectors to return to update intelligence information for a possible attack on Iraq.